Peruvian runoff veers right.
| Autor | Jana, Elsa Chanduvi |
Results from the April 10 election to choose the president, two vice-presidents, 130 congressional representatives and five Andean parliamentarians in Peru confirm what polls and political analysts forecast: The person who will occupy the presidency for the 2016-2021 term will be chosen in a June 5 runoff election (NotiSur, March 25, 2016).
Although all the recent polls predicted that Keiko Fujimori, the right-wing candidate of Fuerza Popular, would get the most votes, it was uncertain whether her opponent in a runoff would be the neoliberal Pedro Pablo Kuczynski of Peruanos por el Kambio (PPK) or the leftist Veronika Mendoza of Frente Amplio. In the end, the conservative nature of Peruvian society helped eliminate the possibility that the more than 21 million Peruvian voters would participate in an election--unprecedented in Latin America, not just Peru--between two women candidates with completely opposite platforms.
With 97.58% of the ballots counted, the Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE) reported Fujimori received 39.8% of the valid votes; Kuczynski, 21%; and Mendoza, 18.8%. The difference between Kuczynski and Mendoza was just over 321,000 votes. After that, Alfredo Barnechea of Accion Popular received 6.9% of the vote; Alan Garcia of Alianza Popular, 5.8%; Gregorio "Goyo" Santos of Democracia Directa, 4%; and the remaining four candidates--including former president Alejandro Toledo of the Peru Posible party--got between 1.31% and 0.42%. Toledo received 1.31%.
Many political analysts believe Fujimori won because she is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who governed the country between 1990 and 2000 and is credited by some with freeing the country from terrorism. Alberto Fujimori has been serving a 25-year prison term since 2009 for crimes against humanity and corruption (NotiSur, May 1, 2009).
It was his government that was responsible for promoting the notion that he had freed the country from terrorism, when in reality the defeat of terrorism and the capture of Sendero Luminoso leader Abimael Guzman in 1992 was the result of the patient and efficient work of an intelligence agency (the Grupo Especial de Inteligencia, or GEIN) composed of officers from the National Directorate Against Terrorism. That fact was concealed by the Fujimori regime. Keiko Fujimori served as Peru's first lady from 1994 to 2000.
A 10-year campaign
Cesar Levano, editor of the newspaper Uno, said that Keiko Fujimori's strong showing is explained...
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