Charlie Carrasco did not speak of subsidies or employment programs.
The candidate of the United Democratic Party of Peru, during the second day of the presidential debate organized by the JNE at the Lima Convention Center, proposed that young people who neither study nor work—the so-called ‘NEETs’—complete compulsory military service. The proposal came wrapped in a package of measures that includes life imprisonment for corruption and contract killing, faceless judges, and even Peru’s withdrawal from the American Convention on Human Rights.
He was not the only one. Other candidates such as Francisco Diez-Canseco and Carlos Espá presented variations of military service, some voluntary and paid. But it was Carrasco who put the most rigid version on the table, weeks before an election in which public safety became the issue that no candidate wants to leave unanswered, no matter how drastic it may sound.
