If you are not familiar about Alan Garcia, let me break it down for you: he is the current President of Peru and he won a second term after a tricked and corrupted national elections in 2006, where the rich and powerful placed him as an alternative to socialist leader Ollanta Humala.
Previously and during his first term, Garcia was the youngest Peruvian president ever -from 1985 to 1990- in what has been considered as the worst government ever in Peru's history. His legacy includes thousands of innocent Peruvians killed by his military and allied-paramilitary; the worst poverty rates ever; and a chaotic state of the economy, society and politics. All of which caused a deep moral crisis among the population and opened the doors for an unknown candidate and good friend of Garcia: Alberto Fujimori.
In 1985, at the end of his first term, Garcia run away from Peru escaping criminal charges. He lived with his family in Bogota and Paris, in lavish luxurious houses and apartments that no one knows how he paid for. Fujimori cleared him from the accusations of robbery, assassinations and corruption. Eventually he returned to Peru to run for the presidency again. After being re-elected, he has shown signs of mental instability. As sad as it is, Alan Garcia has mental problems and he depends on medication to regulate his mood changes that are result of a bipolar disorder. He's got grandeur dreams and everyone around him is playing his game as long as they get their slice of the cake.
Now I explained all of this stuff so you can understand this news:
- LIMA, Peru - Peruvian President Alan Garcia announced his country's intention to bid for 2020 Olympics on Wednesday, saying the Andean nation is ready for the challenge.
Garcia said Peru has grown significantly enough to stage the Olympic Games, pointing to the improvement in its economy, high level of foreign investment and decreasing poverty rates.
"Why can we think of hosting the Olympics? Does it surprise you so much?...Why can't we think big?" Garcia said in government release.
Garcia also responded Wednesday to criticism that Peru's infrastructure is insufficient to handle the Olympics. He says Peru should think big and aim for the games.
While the International Olympic Committee awards the games to cities, no specific location was identified in the government's announcement.
The largest athletic competitions in Peru to date were soccer's Copa America in 2004 and the Under-17 World Cup in 2005. - AP
Personally, I would love to see Peru hosting such an important event. But, come on! I could spend hours here writing about why Peru will not be ready to host the Olympic Games in 2020, 12 years from now. I will only mention the lack of a basic transportation system; a world-class infrastructure of housing, hospitals, communications and hotels; professional sport facilities, and prepared national teams. In some regions of Peru the rate of poverty goes up to 85% and electricity and water supplies can be as low as 30% in average.
With the exception of volleyball, shooting, surfing and marathon competitions, Peru has never showed success at international sports summits. In football (soccer) Peruvians used to be good but now is all about individual stars. In Peru, sports are in a primitive level of development even after the 2004 and 2005 soccer tournaments. Sports are not promoted professionally in public schools -like first-world countries do- and is mostly seeing as a luxury for the few, and a recreational field that most people can't afford to do it in a serious way. For some football (soccer) players it is also a way to get out of poverty, since they get to make good money in Europe even if they never perform well for the national team.
Peruvian kids play soccer and volleyball in dusty fields of the mountains, sandy beaches or neighborhood streets and most talented athletes have to use their own money to pay for expenses. In most international competitions, the few Peruvian athletes that attend travel just to have a nice experience sightseeing places they would never see otherwise. Some of them even get selected after a corrupted system where personal influences play an important role.
In all its Olympic games history, Peru has won only 4 medals: 1 gold and 3 silver. In the last 2004 games in Greece, Peru didn't obtain any medals. Other Latin American countries were more successful: Cuba (11th. place) got 27 medals, Brazil (16) 10 medals, Jamaica (34) 5 medals, Argentina (38) 6 medals, Chile (39) 3 medals, Bahamas (52) 2 medals, Dominican Republic (54) 2 medals, Mexico (59) 4 medals, Paraguay (65) 1 medal, Venezuela (68) 2 medals, and Trinidad & Tobago (71) 1 medal.
Now you can say that a country might change in twelve years, but that is the same time since I left Peru. During a trip to my homeland last year, I noticed that things have stayed to be exactly the same, with the exception that today Lima has more supermarkets, casinos, stores, cute trees and weird-looking apartment skyscrapers that are popping up in 3 or 4 districts. All of this while most of the city still remains as nothing but a huge shanty town.
Alan Garcia is nuts, seriously. This should not be a funny joke at all, but in times of disgrace some Peruvians prefer to take this news as real blooper.
Peru21, a Peruvian newspaper informs that a vlogger from Lima has made a video presented as a tentative publicity ad for the games. It shows images of the Peruvian capital city and the Estadio Nacional, the main sports facility of the country. Of course, it's just a joke and the vlogger explains it:
- "My friends [that work at] the Government Palace have told me that during a meeting of Garcia and his ministers, Arturo Woodman - the head of the Peruvian Sports Institute- suggested to the President, that Peru should try to host the next Pan-American Games. But Garcia was "so excited" with the [recent] LAC-EU summit that he started yelling 'Why do we think small, when we can go for the Olympics' and said 'Mister Chirito tell the country that we are going to run for the 2016 Olympics Games bid.' Of course no one went against him nor bothered to find out if that silly plan could be possible. That's how they run this country."
Peru 21 says that eventually, members of the Peruvian International Olympic Committee clarified that the deadline to host the 2016 games had expired last year. So now Garcia is going now for the 2020 bid.
What an international embarrassment. Watch this video.
PERU 2016
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Oh boy. Where is my Peruvian pride today? Is not in our sports history nor the current president for sure. I just wish one day Peru will become a socialist and nationalist country, and then sports will become a national priority so that every citizen of Peru, will get the chance to use it as a tool for personal development. Even if we never get to host a Olympic game.
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