WALTER ADUVIRI: A THREAT TO PUNO’S AND PERU’S DEVELOPMENT

By Michele Makhlouf 

peruthisweek.com. September 30, 2014

Puno, like the rest of the cities in Peru, will hold the regional elections this 5th of October. While other city’s electional future like Lima can be predicted – Castañeda is the #1 favorite – in the fifth most populated city in Perú, the competition between the many candidates create a state of uncertainty among a divided population.

Let’s take a look at the most controversial candidate of them all, the Aymaran leader, Walter Aduviri. In the year 2011, while Alan Garcia’s second government was in its last days, Walter Aduviri lead one of the most ultraradical movements in our recent history with the purpose of completely stopping mining in southern Puno. To accomplish this, he “naturally” took the international bridge “Desaguadero”, that connects Peru with Bolivia, for several weeks. He further increased the pressure over the government by blocking Juliaca’s International Airport runway. While the controversial movement was on course, he firmly stated that “there will be no mining in southern Puno”. Concern among the individuals about his current candidacy further develops as Puno holds the largest tin exports of the country, while many new international mining proposals are being discussed.

The two largest studies about Puno’s future leader suggest that a second round will take place, with Aduviri confronting Lucio Ávila, the former rector of the National University of the Altiplano. Although both candidates leave much to be desired, the chance of having Walter Aduviri as the regional president of Puno should preoccupy at a greater scale the entire population of Peru. 

His extreme leftist ideology is represented in a recent socialist statement given on an interview to Cuarto Poder: “The voice of the people is the voice of God. If tomorrow the community say Walter go march, we’ll go, we will not have any impediment. Because the population is who commands, the population is who governs, the population is who decides.” Despite his extreme ideology, what’s more concerning is the action Aduviri plans to implement if he gets elected as the regional president.

3 extreme leftist and social actions act as a base for Aduviri’s candidacy. His first approach as the regional president of Puno would be to dissolve and rearrange the jurisdictional model, claiming that by making the “judges and prosecutors in the country elected by popular vote” the corruption would cease.

Moreover not only would he mess with the legal model but also with the penitentiary system. One of his first actions if he reaches power would be to remove the prisons in Puno, supporting this movement by stating that “if Lima as the capital region produces more delinquents, more thieves, and more criminals, they should be imprisoned there.” Without doubt, a very polemic issue.

However his social support transcends greater barriers as he would limit SUNAT’s power over unreported business. He suggest that “just as the national government supports the economic power, we’ll support our microenterprises.”

Aduviri proposes many unfavorable actions that as an effect will decrease the rate of development, however, at the end it’s the Puno people who decide. Let’s wait and see.

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