PERU: Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and defeated Peruvian presidential candidate Ollanta Humala react to President Alan Garcia's new administration

As Peruvian President Alan Garcia winds down festivities after his inauguration on Friday (July 28), Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Peruvian rival Ollanta Humala react to Garcia's new administration. Bachelet who was one of over half a dozen world leaders to attend the ceremony, said she is particularly fond of Peru. "As a woman whose mother lived in Arequipa (Peru) when young and who was raised by a mother who, when she wanted to say something affectionate would say, 'You're worth a Peru. You are my sun,' to me, it's particularly handsome to be here today," she said speaking to reporters outside the presidential palace. Garcia held bilateral meetings with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and Bachelet, who said it was fruitful. "With President Garcia, just as when he went to Chile as president-elect, we had an extraordinary work meeting to advance topics that we want to move ahead-- as in is an economic accord that has been beneficial to both countries, to look and see if we can move towards a free trade agreement-- it's all very auspicious and we expect to be able to complete it soon," she said. Meanwhile, nationalist leader and former military commander Ollanta Humala, who lost the presidency to Garcia in a second-round poll, said Garcia's 2-hour inauguration speech was filled with deceit. "It's the continuation of the Fujimori-Montesinos, Toledo era without Toledo and without Fujimori," he said outside his party headquarters. "The basics haven't changed. The basics were the changing of the rules of the game-- something they themselves, Alan Garcia and his APRA party, have written into their government plan: a return to the Constitution of '79, not a constitutional reform which is what Alan Garcia has now proposed. That is tricking the people of Peru." Forty-three year old Humala campaigned to increase state control over Peru's economy.

ITN Source | July 29, 2006

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