OLLANTA HUMALA, Peru’s president-elect, has in a matter of months jumped from one major Latin American political camp to another. A former coup-plotting colonel, Mr. Humala used to be a follower of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and his authoritarian brand of socialism; Venezuelan money may even have funded Mr. Humala’s campaign. But after the first round of the election — in which three competing moderate candidates divided the centrist vote and eliminated one another, leaving a choice between populists of the left and right — Mr. Humala reinvented himself. He imported Brazilian advisers and claimed to have adopted the model of former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who successfully mixed free-market policies with social welfare and stuck to democratic norms.
With Mr. Humala due to take office at the end of July, Peruvians have to hope that his conversion is real. For now the jury is out: Peru’s stock market plunged 12 percent Monday as the presidential runoff result became clear, but it rebounded after Mr. Humala reiterated his commitment to respect private property and the Peruvian constitution and pursue responsible fiscal policies. On Thursday the president-elect embarked on a regional tour that started in Brazil — and excluded Venezuela.
Simple logic ought to draw the president toward the continent’s emerging giant rather than Mr. Chavez’s basket case. Thanks to its pursuit of free-market policies, which have attracted foreign investors to its rich mineral reserves, Peru already has the fastest-growing economy in Latin America over the past decade, and its poverty rate has dropped by half. Mr. Lula, who led Brazil for eight years before being replaced by his handpicked successor this year, pioneered ways of redistributing the fruits of capitalism more quickly to the poor; that arguably has been the missing element in Peru’s success story.
Mr. Chavez, in contrast, presides over the only Latin American economy to remain mired in recession. Soaring inflation, shortages of staple goods and one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime are the products of his 1960s-style socialism; only his persecution of opponents and his dismantling of democratic institutions keep him in power. Mr. Humala’s professed allegiance to Mr. Chavez led to his defeat in the last Peruvian election, while his switch to Mr. Lula got him elected. So on both substantive and political grounds, Mr. Humala has a powerful incentive to follow the Brazilian course. If he does, Brazil will be reinforced as the continent’s emerging leader, while Mr. Chavez — who once aspired to be a latter-day Simon Bolivar — will spiral further toward oblivion. And Peru will have a reasonable chance of finding a path to equitable growth.
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