Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been openly meddling in Peru’s April election.

He’s hurled insults at centrist Lourdes Flores, a leading candidate, and cavorted on camera with Ollanta Humala, in a message implying to Peru’s voters that a vote for Humala was a vote for Chavez’s abundant open checkbook, something Flores would never get.

This led to extremely bitter relations between the two states, plus a local magazine putting Chavez and Humala on its cover depicting them as an ape and its apelet.

But something happened on the way to the polls – the SAME thing that happened on the way in Mexico’s polls – the incumbent party, insulted by Chavez, gained. Peruvians don’t put up with insults to their president and Mexicans don’t either. These are, after all, real democracies.

So, now Lourdes Flores has taken a strong lead in Peru’s coming elections. It probably doesn’t hurt that a strong, intelligent woman, Michelle Bachelet, was just elected president next door in Chile. Take that, Hugo Chavez!

The EFE story is here:

New poll shows growing lead for conservative in Peru

Lima, Jan 25 (EFE).- Conservative Lourdes Flores is consolidating her lead in the Peruvian presidential race, a poll released Wednesday indicates.

“Lourdes Flores is consolidating voting intentions in Lima and has captured the votes that were going to Paniagua,” the director of Catholic University’s Public Opinion Institute, Fernando Tuesta, told EFE Wednesday.

He also sought to explain the outcome by noting that voters in Lima are “more sensitive to media effects,” a reference to a wave of negative coverage of Humala and his associates, focusing in particular on the candidate’s supposed ties to leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Tuesta’s survey showed Flores fares best among women aged 18-44, while middle-aged and elderly women are most hostile to Humala.

Asked why they support her, Flores partisans cited her sex, her proposals and personal qualities such as honesty and sincerity.

Humala backers said they were confident their man would battle corruption and that they like his military background and nationalist views.

Peruvians will go to the polls April 9 to elect a successor to Alejandro Toledo for a five-year term. EFE pau/dr

UPDATE: El Universal is reporting that Humala is desperately trying to distance himself from Chavez, denying contact and assistance. The story is here.