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Ollanta Humala stressed the importance of his trip to Bolivia to meet with that country’s president, Evo Morales, whom he said he shared a vision of integration, for which he expects to secure future projects.

”It's an important meeting because Bolivia and Peru are one nation and there is a strong Aymara population. I know Evo Morales from when he was a deputy, candidate to the presidency,” recalled President-elect Ollanta Humala Tasso. In this regard, he said the purpose of his visit was to talk to the Bolivian president so that in the future, when he takes his constitutional mandate, they can secure projects needed to benefit the people of both nations.

”We had a widely shared vision of integration. So I want to talk to him now as a future government to shape the cultural, commercial, and economic projects in several occasions we talked and now I think we can do them,” he said. As recalled, Humala will travel on Monday night to Bolivia, and Tuesday will be received by President Evo Morales, a week after his first tour of several countries in the region after his victory in a second round of elections.

Also, Humala Tasso confirmed that he also ahs the goal of eventually visiting Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and the United States because “it is necessary to shake everyone’s hands” to fight poverty and drug trafficking. “Here it is not about ideological issues but to solve real problems and fight the real enemies of the country which is poverty, inequality, exclusion, and drug trafficking and for that we have to all shake hands,” he said.

At another point, Humala said he hopes to leave his office within five years with a 70% approval rating now that Peruvians have now awarded him, according to a recent national survey firm Ipsos Apoyo. “The important thing is that you approve of me the same when I leave the presidency. That's what worries me, so I shall endeavor to maintain that and I think I can do so if I try to be consistent with what was said in the campaign, that's what we want,” he said.

On the other hand, internationalist Ernesto Velit Granda said that the tour to be undertaken by President-elect Ollanta Humala Tasso to Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Bolivia would strengthen the Andean Community of Nations (CAN). “In general terms, it will strengthen the Andean Community of Nations; to the point of our main interest, not to let the Mercosur trade axis be the only dominate of the sub-region, but the CAN can also fulfill its role,” he said.

Also, Velit Granda said that this tour would serve to improve relations with Bolivia that had cooled, and progressed under Peruvian Ambassador Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros in La Paz. He said that as for Ecuador and Colombia, bilateral relations have no problems. In Ecuador, he said, the government of President Alan Garcia Perez has defined the border issue, and Colombia has strengthened the relationship through the formation of the Pacific Rim.

Similarly, the analyst said the president-elect has done very well, before starting his government, trying to legitimize his status as president-elect with a tour of the countries of the sub-region such as Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. “These are precisely the countries that Peru has relations with and must maintain better coordination,” he said. He said that in the case of Venezuela, Ollanta Humala’s visit would have to be postponed because President Hugo Chavez is not in the best of health at the moment.