GONZALO IN POLICY
As a citizen I believe in the POLICY with capital letters, in the efficient and consensual management of power (governance and governability). I think that politicians should be vocational and not professional, temporary (useful to society for certain specific projects) and not ever-tyrants of their own desire for power.
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Thus, on my return to Peru, after three decades in Europe, I was rediscovering Lima, enjoying it in its eternal benefits and suffering it in its short-term weaknesses. And it happened that they invited my mother to speak at the Congress of the Republic, in an event of homage to my father organized by Popular Action (AP). And it occurred to her that I speak instead. I agreed with the organizers and spoke in front of the staff of Popular Action. My long speech was recorded by the cameras of the Congress channel and saved in its archives.
THE BEGINNING
Shortly after, they invited me to breakfast in a beautiful house in La Molina, all made in Arequipa sillar. It was the home of what would later be my friend and co-religionist Javier Díaz Orihuela. There the main staff of the party spoke to me at that time, Javier Alva Orlandini, Javier Arias Stella, Sandro Mariátegui Chiappe, etc. They vindicated the political trajectory of my father, the affection of the founder of the party and twice President of the Republic, Fernando Belaúnde Terry towards my family, etc. They also explained to me that for the municipal elections the intention to vote by AP was in a famished 3rd / 3rd (three per thousand). And we talked a long time about how we could recover the AP, beginning with the recovery of Lima, which had been lost electorally by agreeing with the Popular Christian Party (PPC) in previous elections. In the end they proposed that I introduce myself to the internal elections of the party to try to be the AP Candidate for the Mayor of Lima. And surprisingly, with so much against, I accepted.
POPULAR ACTION
Many good people I met at the time in AP. And a few, less holy ... I was forming a good team, surrounding myself with capable people. I immersed myself in the Municipal Library of Lima with the support of the then governor of Economy of the Government of Castañeda Lossio, Diego Uceda, who ordered that all possible information be provided, and I became an expert in Lima, his projects and works, already in the pre-campaign.
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Thus, in the interns I faced heated debates with other pollen candidates, among which Enrique Bedoya, then Rector of the Technological University of Peru (UTP). And miraculously, I won the interns. And I was invested Candidate for the Mayor's Office of Lima by Popular Action, the party founded by Fernando Belaunde (baptist godfather) and in which Ciro Alegria (my father) militated.
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Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trying to make a Unit List, without winners or losers, incorporating the various families of the Party. And it was a well-intentioned mistake that accompanied me throughout the campaign to the Mayor's Office of Lima, so that at times, it seemed that my Campaign Manager turned out to be one of my hardest opponents.
At the beginning, luck accompanied me with the media, which treated me well. . . For example, the chronicle that made me the newspaper El Comercio that although it was published on a bad date, and went quite unnoticed, was very complimentary.
JAIME BAYLY
Especially important was the opinion of the writer and political journalist Jaime Bayly. The follow-up I did in my Sunday program to my initial campaign, was rising weekly in television raitings and voting intentions. I had a miserable advertising budget, even less than many of my district candidates. It cost us to move. So, we got a large truck, to visit all the districts of Metropolitan Lima, starting with the most remote district to the north (Santa Rosa), hoping to reach the last of the south (Pucusana).
THE CAMPAIGN
Unfortunately, after spending the night in the district of El Agustino, the trip had to be abandoned because we had such a miserable budget that there was no way to continue paying the rent and gas of the truck.
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My Campaign Manager wanted to highlight exclusively my academic and professional virtues. "Man prepared and tested, worthy and reliable, son of the great writer Ciro Alegría." Something like that was the attitude to maintain. On the other hand, I considered that the Mayor is the public office closest to the people, to the residents of the town where he lives. Statistically, the votes of Lima were mainly in strata C and D that want a simple, close Mayor ... And I personally share that attitude because I think the Mayor is one more neighbor, who loves his locality and for a short time (one or two mandates), you want to help your city work. Therefore, I wanted to give an image of closeness and friendship, of a young, cheerful, healthy candidate who knows how to listen to the neighbor. And while my Campaign Manager required me to go out on select public television spaces such as Rosa María Palacios, I checked by the tuning indicators that we needed to reach the neighbor more directly and massively, for example, attending night programs, evening (female), humorous, etc. My Press Officer agreed with me but according to my Campaign Manager, the candidate could not be vulgarized.
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While I obtained two great successes in a night program that was broadcast on Panamericana Television: Enemigos Publicos.
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Halfway through the campaign, the Mayor of Lima (then Luis Castañeda Lossio) invited the candidates to learn about the main municipal works and companies. I attended as one of many candidates. But at two weeks the Mayor invited us to talk with each candidate about his management and when it was my turn, he received me two minutes later, he left me leaving with some collaborators who did not know how to explain the price I had detected in several works.
THE TRICKS
JAIME DE ALTHAUS: DEBATES
Debate on the overvaluation of works I
Debate on the overvaluation of works II
Debate on the overvaluation of works III
HULK
I even launched with the support of AP Congressman Víctor Andrés García Belaúnde a municipal anti-corruption campaign that practically the media ignored:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCDOld8DhAk
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At the programmatic level, I proposed to make 4 commuter train lines that linked all of Lima as a Light Rail, and with about 1,550 million dollars and many tunnel boring machines (so that the work did not harm too much during the period of completion), We could solve the transport problem in Lima. Then, in a simple extension (branch) of Metro Line 1, they spent a little more than the entire total that I had budgeted for the 4 lines. And for Line 2, they have approved a very expensive project of about 6,500 million. A horror!
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Municipal Government Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJKxhsrn988&list=PLQbQfjXbwi4RhTzipbPUqjvyvsmFS2JW9&index=5
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At all costs I needed to relaunch my candidacy that nobody mentioned, and I chose to go to the Public Enemies program (with night and youth audience) and propose that we make a kind of parody about the election campaign, based on the character of the Marvel comics, known as HULK. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWJ8oqy4ojc&list=PLQbQfjXbwi4RhTzipbPUqjvyvsmFS2JW9&index=9&t=229s
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The result was a takeoff in the polls up to 7.5% of voting intention, occupying the fourth place. Every week, I climbed one or two positions. Unfortunately, Hulk was made only two weeks before the final elections. He didn't have time to continue growing ... He lost himself with a worthy 4.78% and 95,000 votes, when AP usually did not exceed 30,000 votes in Lima. Moreover, the candidate of the following municipalities (Edmundo del Aguila, Jr.) returned to obtain only 30,000 votes and yet he was allowed to run for Congress and was a congressman, I was not allowed to appear to Congress.
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However, I worked in the Congress of the Republic between August 2011 to August 2013, as Advisor to an AP Congressman from Loreto, Leonardo Inga Vasquez ("Chacho" Inga for friends and co-religionists).
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In August 2013 I resigned from my position of Advisor and I went to work exclusively in the Academic and Consulting world. But I do not rule out politically collaborating again with my country if the project and dignity of the participants merit it.
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