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Weekly Report - 05 January 2012 (WR-12-01)

TRACKING TRENDS

PERU | Conga strain. No sooner was Peru’s new prime minister, Óscar Valdés, toasting his cabinet’s success at securing peace over Conga than everything began to unravel. Valdés managed to strike a deal with mayors from the north-western department of Cajamarca during a meeting in Lima on 27 December to let a team of international experts draw up a new environmental impact assessment (EIA) into the controversial Conga copper and gold mine proposal. Undeterred, the regional president of Cajamarca, Gregorio Santos, promptly published a law in the official daily El Peruano declaring Conga to be unviable because of the technical inconsistencies of the existing EIA. A furious Valdés reacted by promising to denounce the regional government before the constitutional tribunal for exceeding its authority. He accused Santos and protesters, who took to the streets again (peacefully) on 2 and 3 January, of assuming “radical positions”.
Conga is taking its toll on President Ollanta Humala. Compelled to conduct an extensive cabinet reshuffle in the first half of December [WR-11-50], Humala sank beneath 50% support for the first time in national opinion surveys by local pollsters Datum and Ipsos Apoyo released later that month – from this point the trajectories of his two predecessors, Alan García and Alejandro Toledo, were sharply downwards.
Humala fell nine percentage points in both polls, to 48% and 47% respectively, on the previous surveys in November, although support for the Conga project, with some modifications, was not too bad in the Datum survey at 42%. This poll was fascinating because it showed that Humala’s post-electoral support is the mirror image of his pre-electoral support. His approval rating was highest, at 51%, among members of the highest social-economic stratum ‘A’, which reflects equally the pleasant surprise of the rich and the mounting disenchantment of the poor, although 48% of the very poorest Peruvians, stratum ‘E’, still support him.

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