June 18, 2008

Abstract: (Angus Reid Global Monitor) - More people in Peru now hold a negative opinion of Alan García’s performance, according to a poll by IDICE. 56 per cent of respondents disapprove of the way the president is doing his job, up four points since December.

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - More people in Peru now hold a negative opinion of Alan García’s performance, according to a poll by IDICE. 56 per cent of respondents disapprove of the way the president is doing his job, up four points since December.

In June 2006, García—a member of the American Revolutionary People’s Alliance (APRA)—won Peru’s presidential election in a run-off against nationalist Ollanta Humala of the Union for Peru (UP). In July, García officially took over as president. He had previously served as Peru’s head of state from 1985 to 1990, when he oversaw a major economic crisis.

Earlier this month, residents of Moquegua—a mining town close to the border with Chile—began to stage road blockades and protests calling for the government to raise the share of the increasingly high revenues gained from copper mining in the region. Thousands of people have clashed with police forces.

On Jun. 16, Alberto Jordán, a regional police chief, said the situation was "out of control." Peruvian prime minister Jorge del Castillo declared: "The police are telling citizens to leave and we are asking extremists to take a back seat, because they don’t want a solution, they want death and injury to create a spectacle."

Polling Data

Do you approve or disapprove of Alan García’s performance as president?

	May 2008	Dec. 2007
Approve	40%	40%
Disapprove	56%	52%

Source: Instituto de Desarrollo e Investigación de Ciencias Económicas (IDICE)
Methodology: Interviews with 2,012 Peruvian adults, conducted from May 24 to May 26, 2008. Margin of error is 2.2 per cent.