After becoming the first woman ever elected to run Peru‘s capital, Susana Villaran did what no modern predecessor had dared: She tried to bring order and transparency to a metropolis plagued by widespread corruption and a chaotic, patronage-thick transit system swollen with aging, smog-belching taxis and buses.
The 63-year-old career human rights defender didn’t flinch. She wrestled with powerful rackets to relocate the city’s unsanitary, crime-hounded wholesale market. And her campaign to clean up public transit is beginning to show results, with bus drivers starting to heed designated stops and traffic moving more smoothly in much of the city center as buses stick to designated lanes.
Shaking up the status quo, however, has come at a cost. Villaran could lose her job in a March 17 recall election that she says is organized by the very players she disenfranchised.
After taking office in early 2011, Villaran alienated powerful constituencies by eschewing political horse-trading and cutting out longtime power brokers. Her approval ratings sank below 30 percent as discontent trickled down to the very people Villaran claimed to be trying to help, people who live off the informal economy and saw their livelihoods threatened by change.
The latest poll by the Ipsos-Apoyo firm shows 50 percent of Lima voters backing Villaran’s ouster, though that’s down 10 percentage points from December. Villaran is clawing back, helped by a broad coalition of supporters including the conservative she defeated to win office.
Detractors portray Villaran as an elitist who has done little to improve public works in the 9-million person city she oversees, and she has irritated religious conservatives by promoting gay rights.
In the teeming moonscape of the district of San Juan de Lurigancho, 58-year-old street vendor Santiaga Montes said it took the recall to spur Villaran into action.
“She doesn’t do anything,” Montes said. “In my neighborhood everything is soil. Everything is rock. We can barely walk. No one builds streets or sidewalks. So why would I want this kind of mayor?”
Villaran insists she has invested more in infrastructure than her predecessor, Luis Castaneda. Construction is under way on a major inner-city artery along the Rimac River while ridership on an expanding, dedicated-lane bus system has doubled on her watch. Out in the hilly poor districts, where many get their water in tank trucks and nearly everyone works in the informal economy, Villaran is installing retaining walls …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News