Founder @comitedelectura. Co-founder @RecambioPe @IncidePe. @Georgetown GLS 2022. @WEF @YGLvoices 2014. #AFGG 2012. @SistemaB Peru. Chevening Fellow. TEDxster.
Lima, Perú
Joined August 2012
- Tweets23.1K
- Following1.6K
- Followers26.3K
- Likes3.8K
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
What a comeback.
We will need time to properly understand it. But I think this was a 20th century politician who, at the very last possible moment, figured out how to run a 21st century campaign. After his first round loss, Lula started carrying a smartphone for the first time in his life, brought in younger aides who knew how to run a real digital operation, and finally was able to create some excitement in one of the world’s most terminally online countries. The net result was 3 million more people who turned out to vote, fewer spoiled ballots, votes from third-party candidates, and some repented bolsonaristas as well.
Flávio Bolsonaro challenged the results, but he faces an extremely difficult battle. The margin of victory, more than 4 million votes, was too large to be explained by the delay in polling stations closing or any other abnormalities. Big Brazilian power brokers, including the so-called Centrão, are dutifully accepting the result. The Bolsonaros will ask the White House for support, but it’s important that the vast majority of Latin American leaders, including those on the right like Keiko Fujimori and José Antonio Kast, quickly recognized Lula’s victory. They concluded this is over, and the Trump administration may do the same.
For Lula, the good news is that he won, and the bad news is that he won. He ran up a big bill to help make this happen: More than $60 billion in extra spending, welfare payments, debt forgiveness and other fiscal largesse. This in a country with real interest rates above 8% and a debt burden forecast to reach 83% of GDP this year, up a whopping 12 percentage points in Lula’s term. Markets are hemorrhaging in the hours after his victory, and they may get worse until Lula details his plans to cut spending. Lula also faces the most conservative Congress on record, a skeptical business community, and consumers who are struggling under huge debts as well.
But look, Lula would rather deal with those problems than the alternative. He will be the man who defined an entire half-century of Brazilian history, from the metalworkers’ strike he led as a labor union leader in 1979 to the end of his fourth term in 2030. A truly epic story that is still being written, and may yet bring more surprises.
--
For more, including reactions from @DaniCamp0 and Alessandra Ribeiro:
americasquarterly.org/articl…
Ya salió mi post de todos los domingos con mis recomendaciones de lo más interesante que leí, vi o escuché esta semana en medios internacionales. Lo encuentran aquí en mi cuenta de Substack. ¡Muchas gracias por leer! augustotownsend.substack.com…
“Searching for a model or a reference point, I asked (Ricardo) Hausmann how he would describe (Venezuela). ‘A coalition of two kleptocracies,’ he said.” - @anneapplebaum theatlantic.com/magazine/202…
"Most Israeli Jews now see the world the way Netanyahu has long seen it. That is Netanyahu’s great victory. But it is matched by his great loss: Much of the world now sees Israel the way Gazans see it." - @ezraklein nytimes.com/2026/10/25/opini…
Qué manera de no poder reconocer un error clarísimo. Las leyes las aprueba el Congreso, no una de sus cámaras.
#CuentasClaras | Miguel Torres, presidente del Senado, descartó errores en la promulgación de la ley que otorga facultades legislativas al Ejecutivo: “El Senado ha cumplido con sus funciones dentro de lo establecido por reglamento”.
Mantente informado en la WEB ► canaln.pe/
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
Todos los incendios han quedado extinguidos.
Esta mañana no tenemos ninguno activo.
💪🇵🇪💪🇵🇪🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️
Discrepo respetuosamente con Transparencia. El problema de incertidumbre jurídica que genera la regla “modificar sin desnaturalizar” no se va arreglar por vía interpretativa, porque es imposible ponerse en todos los escenarios posibles. La regla es mala y tiene que ser cambiada.
Ridículo que a alguien se le haya ocurrido poner “El Senado de la República ha dado la ley siguiente”. Las cámaras del Legislativo no son poderes independientes ni están en relación de subordinación una frente a la otra. El que da leyes es el Congreso como un todo. Corrijan esto.
🔴 #LOÚLTIMO | En la edición extraordinaria de El Peruano de este 22 de octubre, se publicó Ley N° 32743 que delega las 27 facultades legislativas al gobierno de Keiko Fujimori aprobadas en la última sesión del Pleno del Senado.
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
The GRU hacked into Jared Kushner's iPhone. Dutch military intelligence (MIVD) then recruited a GRU spy who gave them access to the hacked phone. What MIVD discovered was that Kushner had access to two bank accounts --one Azerbaijani, the other Israeli --where Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Emirati ruler Mohammed bin Zayed deposited money. It sounds like a slightly far-fetched episode of "Slow Horses," but it's real. And it proves just how eye-poppingly corrupt this administration was and continues to be as its "special envoy" decides the fate of tens of millions in Europe in the Middle East. Simply incredible reporting by Matthew Cole, drawn from his new book on Kushner. vanityfair.com/story/jared-k…
TIENE SPOILERS 👇 pero si han visto el final de temporada de #SlowHorses, debo decir que, aunque extraordinario, concuerdo con esta opinión. Ella merecía más.
Warning - Slow Horses spoilers… 🐴🚨
So, one thing really bothered me about the excellent Slow Horses finale. Emma Flyte was one of the few genuinely normal, relatable characters in a world of misfits, cynics and damaged people. She brought competence, integrity and a moral compass to a series in which those qualities are in short supply. She also provided an important perspective from outside the dysfunctional Slough House gang.
She’d become a significant part of the story, and we had reason to care about her.
Yet she’s murdered in cold blood while risking her life to protect people who aren’t even her friends. Her death visibly affects Ho. And then… nothing.
When they raise a glass to the deeply weird Coe, Flyte doesn’t even merit a mention, despite having played a much bigger role in the series.
I understand that Slow Horses is deliberately unsentimental, but there’s a difference between avoiding sentimentality and denying a character the acknowledgement she’s earned.
Flyte deserved better. And so did the audience.
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
Trump approval starting to look like a dead ringer for Bush's second term.
Best offering by a mile indeed.
The spy drama “Slow Horses” has never reached the breakout status of fellow Apple TV series “Ted Lasso” or “Severance,” despite being, in Inkoo Kang’s estimation, the streaming site’s best offering by a mile. newyorker.com/culture/on-tel…
Coincido en buena medida con @JavierAlban.
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
Breaking: Elon Musk ordered the Starlink slowdown that blindsided Ukraine on.wsj.com/4sgcpBv
Salió mi artículo de todos los domingos con mis recomendaciones de lo más interesante que leí, vi o escuché esta semana en medios internacionales. Lo encuentran aquí en mi cuenta de Substack (y si ya están allí, aprovechen para suscribirse gratuitamente¡). augustotownsend.substack.com…
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
This is Limoges city hall. On fire.
Storming and setting fire to seats of democratic government is insurrectionary violence. No grievance gives anyone the right to do this.
Students have legitimate grievances. This violence is burying them. The missing teachers, overcrowded classrooms and anxiety about the future disappear behind the destruction.
For a politics built on permanent confrontation, that can be useful. Mélenchon’s strategy connects separate grievances into a single indictment of the system. The confrontation becomes the cause.
And violence feeds on perceived weakness. When the state appears to have disappeared, people test its limits. Each retreat invites another challenge. A kind of madness takes hold: destroying the institutions we depend on comes to look like liberation.
I wrote in June that democracy rests on a promise: that the state is strong enough to guarantee everyone the same protection, the same rights and the same rules. When that promise breaks, the consequences extend far beyond security.
Fear spreads. People protect themselves because they no longer trust that they will be protected together. They retreat into their group, their community, their identity. Those promising order gain ground. Distrust replaces the confidence that makes a common life possible.
And is exploited by all those, inside and outside the country, who want to see it burn!
Augusto Townsend K. retweeted
Israeli settlers are out of control, because the Israeli government allows them to be. And while attacks on diplomats or journalists command attention, as they should, this happens unnoticed to Palestinian farmers all the time.
#Breaking: European diplomats, including French and Polish representatives, who went to the West Bank to observe the olive harvest, have been violently assaulted by Israeli settlers.
