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How long will it take the US to become like Peru?
Dan Hannan 1 day ago
My native Peru has begun its descent into hell. Western embassies are besieged by people seeking visas. Capital flight has started. There is talk of a military coup. And the result hasn’t even been declared yet.
As I predicted a couple of months back, the presidential election has been won by Pedro Castillo, an unreconstructed Marxist who wants to kick out foreign companies and confiscate their assets.
Until last year, Peru had been doing enormously well. Per capita gross domestic product had doubled since the millennium, life expectancy had increased from 71 to 76, the number of children completing secondary education had risen from 75% to 100%, and inequality had tumbled.
Then came the lockdown, one of the harshest in the world. The impact on a largely informal economy can well be imagined, yet a curfew enforced by the military failed to prevent Peru from topping the global league table for COVID-19 deaths per million. The coronavirus, like a war, had altered people’s psychology, making them more demanding of big government. Two authoritarian candidates reached the runoff: Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the jailed dictator, and Castillo, whose manifesto openly promised Marxism-Leninism.
By the tiniest of margins — 50.13% to 49.87% — Castillo won. The narrowness of that result has inevitably led to frantic protests and court challenges. I have every sympathy with the demonstrators. It does seem extraordinary that someone can take office in such unusual circumstances, with such a negligible mandate, and then enact the sort of revolution that Castillo proposes, scrapping the constitution, refounding the republic on socialist principles, liquidating Congress, and realigning the country with China.
Is it unreasonable that a previously successful nation can be destroyed because of 40,000 votes cast desperately during a lockdown? Yes. Is it wrong that the system can now be revolutionized with barely any checks? Absolutely. Is it scary that Peru is set to follow Venezuela? You bet. But them’s the rules — the rules, to repeat, accepted beforehand by all the candidates.
Once you decide that process should be subordinated to the outcome, you open the door to arbitrary government. That distinction explains why North America is so much richer and more stable than Latin America. The rule of law, pure and simple, is why no Mexican politician has ever had to propose building a wall to keep the gringos out.
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