Your humble scribe was reading a minor report on the state of play in the regional election campaign in Cajamarca this morning (Peru chooses its regional and provincial governors, city mayors etc on October 5th in a pretty important election for the country). It’s not the type of article that gets mention on these pages normally, more the type that forms the general background reading, but this one suddenly expanded and gave a quote about the wider political scene in Peru that’s both succinct and very accurate. Here it is, translated:
“The person who has the most money gets access to be a candidate (for election)…. Simply put, politicians are those who have the most money. Businesspeople are welcome and if they’re associated with narcotrafficking it’s even better, because they handle even more money and one of the ways to legalize it is to go into politics in order to get protection.”
And that’s exactly right.