Lourdes Flores
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| Political charges: | Congresswoman of the Republic |
| Term in Office: | July 27, 1990 - July 26, 2000 |
| Date of Birth: | October 7, 1959 |
| Political party: | Partido Popular Cristiano
Unidad Nacional (Coalition) |
| Profession: | Lawyer |
Lourdes Celmira Rosario Flores Nano is a Peruvian politician and lawyer. She currently leads the Unidad Nacional (National Unity) alliance and the Partido Popular Cristiano (Popular Christian Party or PPC) in Peru, which is the most well-known right-of-center party of the country.
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[edit] Biography
Lourdes Flores was born in Lima on 7 October 1959. She studied at the Colegio Reyna de Los Ángeles and the law school of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. She pursued graduate studies in Madrid, received a masters from the Instituto de Empresa and a doctorate from the Universidad Complutense. As an independent lawyer, Flores specialized in civil and business law. In 1992, Flores attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She later taught commercial law at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the University of Lima.
[edit] Political Life
At age 18, Flores joined the Popular Christian Party, a conservative branch of the Christian Democracy movement founded in 1966. She was an assistant to Enrique Elías Larosa, who became Minister of Justice.
Flores was elected National Deputy from Lima to the Congress of the Republic in 1990 with more than 250 000 votes. During that election, the PPC formed part of the FREDEMO front backing Mario Vargas Llosa for president.
She opposed the 1992 "auto-golpe" of President of the Republic Alberto Fujimori, organizing congressional meetings in her home. She was elected to the constituent congress later that year and re-elected to congress in 1995.
She denounced Fujimori's holding of Japanese citizenship in 1997 and opposed the activities of his security chief, Vladimiro Montesinos.
[edit] Candidate for President
In 2000, Lourdes Flores led the PPC in joining with the Partido Renovación and the Partido Solidaridad Nacional to form the Unidad Nacional electoral alliance. She ran for president in 2001 on that ticket. For most of the campaign, she was second in the polls behind Alejandro Toledo. However, she lost considerable ground after her father called Toledo a "guanaco," a common racial slur used against indigenous people in Peru (Toledo is half-indigenous). She finished in third place by only a 1% margin behind Toledo and Alan Garcia Perez.
Flores and Unidad Nacional stayed in opposition to the Toledo government, while supporting some of his economic measures. She ran unsuccessfully in the 2006 presidential race which took place 9 April 2006. As in 2001, Garcia edged her out by a slim margin (0.5%) for the second run-off spot.
