Non-UK political happenings thread

agreed

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The presidential runoff in Peru is between Pedro Castillo, a 51-year-old teacher and union leader, and Keiko Fujimori, the 45-year-old daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori.

While Castillo is framed as representing the left, the rural communities and the poor and Fujimori representing the right, the urban population and the rich, this may be deceptive as both candidates are socially conservative. Neither candidate supports same-sex marriage or abortion rights.

It should also be noted that both candidates received only a small share of the votes in the first round: Castillo 19% and Fujimori 13%. The big decider is the 68% of the electorate that voted for neither. A similar situation occured in neighbouring Ecuador earlier this year, where the progressive candidate, Arauz, won the first round 33% vs 20% but was beaten in the second round by pro-business candidate Lasso in a 52% vs 48% turnaround.

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these summaries are useful but for some reason getting replied at with a pure wall of facts stresses me out. maybe it’s just me

anyway, dunno if we have any Peruvians on here but would like to understand a bit better how extreme Castillo’s social conservatism is within that context. does sound pretty deplorable though and apologism from people (always straight men) on the left is never a great look. still seems like the best / least bad option though

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This article gives some more background:

Some quotes from the article:

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I find them quite patronising a lot of the time, sorry Hoogy :upside_down_face:

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Fuck :cry:

Sorry, but this is a really useless contribution by me so I’ve deleted it.

I’m not sure what the chances of Ethiopia collapsing within the next 25 or so years, but must be quite high.

Be very surprised in Egypt doesn’t try and encourage this in some way as if Ethiopia does stay together as a unified state there absolutely will be an war between the two.

Castillo is quite linked to Shining Path.

That will not go down well at all in Lima. Considering that Peru is probably in the top 5 worst affected countries by Covid, I’d say there is definitey potential for bad stuff to happen.

i often find the summaries useful, wasn’t trying to discourage them. felt a bit weird i guess cos my post was intended to get people’s thoughts and perspectives and the response was just telling me stuff i already knew & could have googled otherwise. if hoogy’s post was intended to add more context for other readers of the thread then i’m fine with that though! didn’t mean to make it a big thing

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He has denied having any ties to terrorism or Shining Path. The accusations mainly hinge on alleged connections between members of the teacher’s union faction that Castillo leads with the Shining Path’s political arm.

The more important thing is that many Peruvians believe he is linked to Shining Path though, as opposed to him actually being a member etc.

I’d also assume his tactit endorsement of Chavismo will count against him in the urban areas.

Yeah realised I went in and made a bit of a twat of myself, just because I felt like these kind of posts from Hoogy are useful when you’re not familiar with a situation in a particular country, and also too lazy to start checking through various newspaper. Like I almost always am.

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Smear campaigns are part and parcel of elections. It should be noted though that in the first round Castillo performed well in the Peruvian highlands that sufffered the most from terrorist bloodshed in the past.

Absolutely. Although many middle class urban voters are more likely to vote for Fujimori regardless.

I was pretty much ignorant of this conflict until today. Spent about an hour reading various sources of info. Jesus fuck. I would’ve like to have thought that a situation like this wouldn’t be largely ignored in 2021. Obviously not.

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Practically what could be done about this though? It’s a remote part of the country and the government quite explicitly doesn’t want any interference from the outside.

At the very least the international community could exert significant diplomatic pressure to get the Ethiopian/Eritrean armies to let some bloody food shipments through, no?

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True that European media has been hugely underreporting and the international community has been largely unresponsive on Tigray though, much to the frustration of the org I work for and others that have been reporting on the unfolding situation for the last half year and more

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No, it wasn’t meant as a ‘well actually’ …I agree that mainstream interest in the situation has been woefully poor

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