OAS / UWinnipeg Mission to Peru
Winnipeg Free Press
June 3, 2006
Student Observers Oversee Peru Election
by Tyler Bridges
Ewald Friesen walked into a polling station on election day in Peru two months ago and received the shock of his life.
"The (election) volunteers began applauding my presence," said Friesen, a University of Winnipeg student. "I thought, 'Wow! They care.'"
Friesen was one of five students from Winnipeg invited to monitor the elections by University President Lloyd Axworthy, who is overseeing an observer team for the Organization of American States. The runoff presidential election is tomorrow.
As Friesen and the others have learned repeatedly, the tan OAS vest that they wear immediately engenders respect in a country that still can't take elections for granted.
The students are getting a real-life look at how democracy functions in an underdeveloped nation.
"They will be much wiser for the experience," said Geoffrey Scott, a University of Winnipeg geography professor who is also serving as an OAS observer. Scott has been coming to Peru since 1969.
"In Canada, we take democracy for granted," Scott added. "Here, they have to work for democracy."
Besides Friesen, the other University of Winnipeg students who monitored the first-round election in April and have returned for tomorrow's election are Derrick Martens, Emina Cingel and Jennifer Zorn-Ford. The fifth student, Remi Gosselin, is a Collge Universitaire de Saint-Boniface student who learned about the opportunity through his brother, Benoit, a University of Winnipeg student.
Scott, Axworthy, and the students have marvelled at how Peruvians in April voted with such expectation.
"We complain in Canada when people move a polling station across the street," Friesen said. "Here, there were lines to vote around the corner and down the street. It felt like Carnival at times."
Friesen, 27, is graduating from the University of Winnipeg this year and will become a personal assistant to Stan Struthers, Manitoba's minister of conservation. But his experiences in Peru have him thinking about studying international relations in graduate school or applying for the foreign service exam.
Gosselin has already put his time in Peru to good work.
He produced a 12-minute television documentary in French on the April election for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It's available on the Internet at www.radio-canada.ca/regions/manitoba/tele/Chroniques/peru1et2et325399.shtml
"I'd love to participate in this kind of mission again," said 30-year-old Gosselin, who is once again monitoring polling stations in a poor region some 15,000 feet above sea level. "It's refreshing to see people dedicate themselves to elections."