Andean Group - March 2011 (ISSN 1741-4466)
POLITICS: The makings of a narco-state?
With the general elections only a month away, the mudslinging between candidates is in full swing. The 2011 contenders, presidential and congressional alike, are under particular scrutiny for the alleged infiltration of narco-money into their campaigns.
Nearly all the 11 presidential bidders and the 13 political groupings registered to compete in the congressional contest have been tarred by allegations of narco cash. The diffusion of drug-money into politics may not be a new phenomenon, however the apparent scale and extent of the problem in Peru is worrying international observers.
The US State Department's annual Narcotics Control Stategy Report, presented to congress on 1 March, noted that while Peru has a national counternarcotics strategy in place, it does not implement it effectively, nor devote sufficient resources to counternarcotics operations.
The report estimates that drug seizures were up in 2010, with approximately 13 MT of cocaine paste, 16 MT of cocaine hydrochloride (HCl) and 3.4 MT of marijuana seized. In addition, the police counternarcotics branch (Dirando) destroyed 1,148 cocaine-production laboratories, including 18 HCl and 1,130 base laboratories in the drug producing hotspots the Upper Huallaga Valley (UHV) and the Apruímac and Erne (VRAE).
Cocaine manufacturing is moving south from Colombia, adding hugely to the amounts of drug money circulating in the local economy. Officials fear that Peru, currently ranked the world's second largest producer of cocaine and coca, may overtake Colombia as the world's main producer of both in the next two years.
The government's militarisation of the UHV and the Vrae, where the terror
group-turned narco-traffickers, Sendero Luminoso, continues to be active,
distracts the authorities from an ongoing and much deeper form of
“narco-penetration". The outgoing García government's five year counter
narcotics strategy comes to an end in mid 2011, and so the new government will
have to replace it immediately with a new policy.
- US concern dates to 2006
As detailed by WikiLeaks, five days before the 2006 municipal elections, the US embassy expressed worry about the infiltration of narco cash and narco candidates in the elections. The national electoral board found that 214 municipal candidates had lied on their CVs. Of these, 156 had criminal records, many related to narco-trafficking offences. Small, cash strapped regional political parties with limited vetting resources available to them are particularly vulnerable to infiltration.