Verónika Mendoza, the candidate of the Peruvian left …

From Lima

“We are going to work very hard by April 11 to give Peru an alternative to change, a democratic alternative,” he said. Verónika Mendoza, the young figure of the Peruvian left who is running for the presidency of the progressive coalition Together for Peru. A week before the elections, the polls put her in a close brawl, with an unpredictable end, with five other candidates, four from the right and a populist who oscillates between the proposals of the center-left and the right, to go to a safe second round.

At 40, Verónika Mendoza, or simply Vero as her supporters call her, is running for the presidency for the second time. In the 2016 election, he surprised and came in third place, very close to going on waivers. His performance in this electoral process resuscitated a left that had played a marginal role in various elections for more than two decades. Born in the Andean region of Cusco, daughter of teachers, Peruvian father and French mother, psychologist and anthropologist graduated in France, she appeared on the political scene in 2011, when she was elected member of the Congress of her region.

Placed in a position of waiting in these elections, it is the target of the dirty war of its rivals and the mainstream media, which They launched a campaign of fear of the change of neoliberal economic model proposed by the left. As might be expected, his opponents turned to Venezuela to attack him. It was enough for Mendoza to question the obvious failure of the Lima Group to resolve the Venezuelan crisis and to propose an approach to the Contact Group for an exit that calls for a dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the entire opposition. , for some media to publish huge headlines saying that “Verónika Mendoza recognizes the dictatorship of Maduro” and that she wants to make Peru “another Venezuela”. A dirty war he already suffered during the 2016 campaign.

The Ensemble pour Peru candidate looks with hope at the progress of progressive options in the region and expresses her sympathies to governments like those of Alberto Fernández and Luis Arce in Bolivia., and with the eventual triumph of Andrés Arauz in Ecuador this Sunday, the very day she will compete for the presidency in Peru.

In a dialogue, via Zoom for the restrictions due to the pandemic, with foreign media correspondents, PageI12 He asked him about the dispute between progressivism and the right in the region, his candidacy in this context and regional integration.

“There is a clear turning point, a resumption of democracy in Latin America after the coup d’état that took place in Bolivia, There are people who are increasingly demanding that their governments guarantee health, education and housing as rights. In Ecuador, the victory of a progressive government could take place on April 11, as in Peru. I think in this context there is a favorable scenario for Latin America, with governments that could work for integration, not only from a commercial perspective, but also in other sectors, such as health, education and also the protection of our Amazon, which for us is fundamental. We will promote the reactivation and strengthening of integration organizations such as Unasur, Celac and the Andean Community. Our priority will be regional integration by giving priority to the interests of the region and of our peoples. There is a very powerful possible cooperation scenario with the Argentine government ”.

Faced with the current difficult situation marked by the serious health and economic crisis caused by the pandemic, Mendoza indicates that the first actions of his government would be to “guarantee a universal vaccination, free and ordered by the State which allows us to vaccinate at most as quickly as possible to all our peoples, to guarantee the production and distribution of oxygen to prevent the greatest number of Peruvians from dying today from lack of oxygen and to reactivate the economy as quickly as possible. ”He strongly questions the proposal of some candidates to privatize the purchase of vaccines.

To revive the economy, he proposes to increase public investment, a plan to create temporary jobs in small jobs, two economic aid vouchers for the population and to extend the cheap credit program for micro and small businesses. with the approval of the State, measures together they would mean an investment of over $ 16 billion. Faced with criticism from the right, who jumped around his neck for the expenses incurred in these proposals, he replied that “Peru has tax savings to finance these proposals”, and recalls that “even the International Monetary Fund says that it is necessary and possible to issue these two bonds to the population, necessary to families, who have been affected in their income by the immobilization measures, can survive this crisis, but it is also a measure which allows to reactivate the demand and the economy ”. “It’s common sense,” he said, referring to the support his proposal to provide aid bonds has found at the IMF. But the Peruvian right and its candidates strongly oppose these measures. “It is time to save lives, to revive the economy, we cannot continue to stand idly by,” Mendoza replies.

The Ensemble pour Peru candidate proposed “the nationalization of gas,” an announcement that frightened the business community and the right. He specifies that the nationalization he announces “does not mean expropriating or expelling private investors, but that we can make alliances with them so that they can continue to extract and distribute gas, but the decision of where is this resource, which now goes mainly abroad. , it will be the Peruvian State, a decision that has not yet done so, and the priority will be the internal market and national consumption. It is unworthy, foolish, to have a resource at hand and not be able to take advantage of it ”.

If she were to win the elections, Verónika Mendoza would not have, according to all polls, a parliamentary majority and would have to face a fragmented Congress in which various right-wing groups most likely predominate.. Faced with this possible complicated scenario, he indicates that “the main pact that we are going to make is with the people, respecting the program of change for which the people will have voted. At the level of Congress, we will have to bring together all the democratic and honest political forces in a grand democratic coalition in order to be able to come out of this health and economic crisis together ”.

He believes that the great fragmentation of the vote in these elections and the weak support that all the candidates obtain “is the expression of the serious and deep political crisis that Peru has been going through since before the pandemic, hence the need to promote a political reform. in the background thanks to a new Constitution ”. He announces that if he wins the elections, he will call a referendum so that the population decides if they want to change the Constitution inherited from the Fujimori dictatorship, which reduces the State to a subsidiary role of private activity.