Wednesday marked the 1000th day of the presidency of Peru's Alan Garcia, and there are various potential perspectives on his presidency. First, it is critical to recall that the first Garcia administration, from 1985 to 1990, is widely regarded as the worst in Peruvian history, an era when the country came perilously close to failed state status. This carried two implications entering the current term. First, it was obvious that Garcia would seek, above all, to maintain macroeconomic stability in order to inoculate himself against the fear that this term would turn out like the previous one. Second, many hoped that he would energetically devote himself to a wide range of reforms in order to assure that the legacy of his second term would serve as his primary political epitaph.
At this point, the latter set of hopes have been largely extinguished. Especially from abroad, Peru's fundamentals looked strong before the crisis hit. GDP growth was enormous, poverty rates fell, and inflation remained contained. Yet the hope that such a favorable economic environment would lead to broader reforms in critical areas, such as the justice system, anticorruption, environmental conflict, and the country's appalling social breaches, have been largely dashed. For a mix of reasons, the Garcia government has stagnated in all these areas and more, with only incremental achievements in most areas where reform is urgently necessary.
But don't take this blog's word for it. Below the fold is a translation of a report giving a critique of the first 1000 days from the perspective of Peru.21, one the country's more centrist newspapers. While not shy about criticizing the administration, it is the type of media outlet that could have been won over had Garcia decided to govern as he said he would during his campaign (i.e., as a center-leftist) rather as he actually as (largely from the right).
"Report 21: The 1000 Days of Garcia”
The president missed out on the opportunity to approve various fundamental reforms. The South and the East of the country have turned their backs to the Aprista government.
By Emilio Camacho
April 22, 2009
Someone should pass the word along to President Alan Garcia. Someone should elbow him and let him know. Today, on the 1,000th day of his administration, he should be aware that the bus of far-reaching reforms has already stopped at the station of the Government Palace without picking up passengers. In fact, after being faced with the possibility that Garcia’s second term would become a demanding rally, we Peruvians have now been left with a president who has preferred [bike] pedals to Formula 1.
A quick look at the sectors that have daily relevance to ordinary citizens is enough to confirm the above. If in October of 2006 the government launched a long-lasting battle with the SUTEP [ed: monopoly teachers’ union] upon announcing the implementation of teacher evaluations, and then, in July of 2007, ensured that the Congress approve the Teaching Career Law to guarantee the quality of public education, there are now doubts that these new provisions will be implemented because the Executive has not guaranteed funds for the sustained financing of the new pay scale. In other words, in the education sector, we put on our track suits and our running shoes and even started to warm up, but we never made it to the stadium.
In the health sector, the same things have been happening. Fourteen days ago, President Garcia promulgated the Law of Universal Coverage, one of the major reforms proposed in his government platform. The Medical Association, however, has already warned that the law is unenforceable because it is lacking the necessary budget. I.e., we return to the “syndrome of the frustrated runner.”
The analyst Santiago Pedraglio affirms that, during the president’s two and a half years in office, he has suffered from conservatism and has decided to remain static before the spectacle of economic growth. “So much fighting with the SUTEP to then fail to implement the Teaching Career Law. The teaching exam wasn’t any use at all. The other theme is administrative reform [ed: of the public sector]. He has not become involved with this, which is the big package,” says Pedraglio, who still prefers to give the government the benefit of the doubt.
One person who no longer expects anything from this regime is journalist Juan Carlos Tafur. His diagnosis is devastating. “The mother of all of reform is the reform of the State, but I don’t think the government even understands what this is,” he says, and warns that not only have a series of reforms been frozen, but that others, like national security or social spending, have fallen by the wayside.
Economist Pablo Secada shares this vision. According to his perception, the priority has been given to the quantity of public spending while the quality of the investment has not been relegated any importance. To illustrate this, he gives the example of the Together Program. Secada indicates that this body could absorb other programs such as school breakfasts, the Glass of Milk, and the Pronaa so that there is a more transparent management of resources. The problem, he says, is that youth nutrition programs take on a life of their own, generating local power quotas and are more susceptible to use in political campaigning. This explains the government’s reluctance to merge the programs.
SO FAR AWAY FROM THE SOUTH
Moreover, the consequences of the premature fatigue of the second Aprista term have left the president without the backing of the provinces. But in the south of the country, he is left without support and without oxygen. In August of 2006, after Garcia had already assumed the presidency, all of Peru-even the regions that did not vote for him-gave him a vote of confidence.
An Apoyo [ed: polling agency name] survey from this date revealed that the northern coast gave him 76% support, the jungle 65%, the northern mountains 58%, the central mountains 53%, and the southern mountains, full of hope, backed him with 49%, in spite of their historical distance from the APRA.
Today, this support has been diluted. In the latest Ipsos-Apoyo survey, in which, incidentally, the president’s popularity fell in almost all of the regions (except for the North), the president’s approval rating is at 14% in the South, and in the East, 17%.
Journalists Patricia del Rio and Pedraglio agree that, beyond the sector reforms, this is the real hole in the 1000 days of the Garcia presidency: the failure to make the poorest zones of Cusco, Puno, Ayacucho, and the entire Andean South feel included. “The South continues to be as radical and abandoned as it was when Garcia found it,” states Del Rio. Pedraglio, for his part, argues that this “government blindness” is a result of the government’s plan of “unilateral alliance with large investors” as its only development strategy, which eventually served to isolate it.
If the poor leadership that the regime has demonstrated in the battle against corruption is added to this vision-as the director of PROETICA, Cecilia Blondet, reminds us- and the emergence of scandals such as the overvaluation in the purchase of ambulances and police squad cars, in addition to the “petroaudios,” the 1000 days of Garcia do not lead one to foreshadow that the government will achieve its goals, but rather that it—like an old runner?)— is only thinking of a smooth withdrawal.
Photo Credit: Flickr user Presidencia de la Republica de Ecuador
