The republic of Peru is a country in south west of America. Although the economy of Peru is one of the fast growing economies, still its poverty rate is consistently highly. As a rough estimate, one out of every 3 Peruvians is poor. The people in rural and remote areas are poorer as compared to the people in urban areas. For the 2011 election in Peru, Ollanta Humala and Fujimori were competing against each other. Ollanta Humala is a politician and former army officer. This was Hamala’s second attempt. Before this he also competed for presidency in year 2006. Fujimori is the daughter of former Peru president Alberto Fujimori. From 1994-2000, she also served as the youngest first lady. After her MBA, she became member of Peruvian legislature.
During Hamala’s campaign for 2011 elections, he emphasized on his three goals to make the Peru one of the prosperous nations. His three goals are:
- Fair distribution of country’s wealth and key natural resources.
- Promoting foreign investment
- Pacing up economic growth
Hamala also promised many perks for poor people such as pre-school care and free school meals. He also promises government pension for all citizens aged 65. Hamala also had benefit of being endorsed by Alejandro Toledo who was the former president. Fujimori had the endorsement of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the former president and investment banker.
One point that was going against Fujimori was people were afraid that her selection will result in the same reign as practiced by his father.
So, as expected, Ollanta Humala succeeded in defeating Fujimori and became the president of Peru. Not only poor people voted for him, but a lot of prosperous and well educated people also voted for him because everybody in Peru wanted a change. The victory of Humala in 2011 election cause disturbance in the stock market and the index dropped by more than 12.5%, which was the largest drop in history.
Here is a summary of steps taken by Ollanta Hamala during the first hundred days of his reign. Taking the centrist approach, Hamala focused on free-market economy policy and emphasized on social inclusion. All of his steps aim to create healthy economy that will enable him to fund his projects and campaigns for fighting poverty, corruption and other loopholes found in the Peru’s economy.
For a radical change in Peru’s governance, Hamala formed a moderate cabinet. He included those ministers in the cabinet who held posts in previous administration. Although the markets reacted badly on Hamala’s victory, the economy quickly regained its power and resulted in 7.5% expansion in August.