NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING novelist Mario Vargas Llosa compared Peru’s presidential candidates to cancer and Aids, but in choosing one over the other he has triggered an angry backlash.
Commentators and bloggers have criticised Vargas Llosa for backing Ollanta Humala, a populist former army officer, as the lesser evil in the June election.
Llosa said he would vote for Mr Humala “unhappily and with fear” because the alternative, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, presented an even graver threat to democracy.
Critics of Vargas Llosa, normally a revered figure in Peru and across Latin America, predicted that he would rue his choice if Mr Humala became president and emulated his one-time mentor, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.
Naive, irresponsible and deranged were among the kinder epithets raining down on the writer. Jaime Bayly, a leading commentator, said Vargas Llosa (75), had reached an age at which he “deserved to be happy and without fear”, and so for his own sake he should abstain from voting.
The acrimony underlined Peru’s polarisation since centrist candidates cancelled each other out in the election’s first round, allowing two controversial figures from the far left and right to make it to the second round.
Mr Humala (48), who led a military revolt in 2000 and unsuccessfully ran in 2006 as a socialist firebrand, appeals mainly to poor and marginalised groups. Opponents fear he will entrench himself in power and ruin the economy.
Ms Fujimori (36), is tainted by her father’s autocratic and corrupt rule in the 1990s. Supporters say she would emulate her jailed father’s economic competence without undermining democracy.
Both candidates have sought to rebrand themselves as investor-friendly moderates. – ( Guardianservice)