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Supporters of presidential candidate Pedro Castillo celebrate the partial election results outside his campaign headquarters on Monday in Lima, Peru, a day after the presidential run-off. Guadalupe Pardo / AP Hide Caption
Guadalupe Pardo/AP . caption switch
Supporters of presidential candidate Pedro Castillo celebrate the partial election results outside his campaign headquarters on Monday in Lima, Peru, a day after the presidential run-off.
Guadeloupe Bardot / AFP
LIMA, Peru (AFP) – A rural teacher-turned-politician and the daughter of an imprisoned former president on Monday traded the lead in a tight race for Peru’s presidency in a runoff election as the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the Andean country.
With 94% of the votes counted, the leftist Pedro Castillo got 50.07% of the vote, while the conservative Keiko Fujimori got 49.92%, according to the official results. This is the third time Fujimori has run for president, a role her father held in the 1990s.
Figures from Peru’s electoral agency, the National Office for Electoral Operations, included nearly all votes cast near the country’s electoral processing centers. The agency was still waiting for voices from remote rural areas and abroad.
“No one can say for sure at this point who will win,” Fernando Twista, professor of political science at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and former president of the Peruvian elections, told a local radio station. In 2016, former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski defeated Fujimori by only 42,597 votes.
Fujimori’s support was expected to come from voters in the capital, Lima, and other urban areas, while Castillo sympathizers are found in rural communities.
None of the candidates made any statements on Monday. Castillo left the rural Andean region of Tacapamba early to travel to Lima.
Polarized populist candidates have promised coronavirus vaccines for everyone and other strategies to alleviate the health emergency that has killed more than 180,000 people in Peru and pushed millions into poverty. The election came after a statistical review by the Peruvian government more than doubled the number of deaths from COVID-19 that officials previously admitted.
Voters across Peru, where voting is mandatory, headed to the polls throughout Sunday on a set schedule aimed at reducing long queues. No disturbances were reported at polling sites, which opened even in San Miguel del Ene, a remote village in a cocaine-producing region where a massacre two weeks ago ended with 16 people dead.
Pre-election opinion polls indicated that the candidates were nearly tied before the run-off. In the first round of voting, which included 18 candidates, neither of them received more than 20% of the support and both were strongly opposed by sections of Peruvian society.
“The candidate who becomes (president), either Keiko or Pedro, the people, the only thing we have to do is accept him, but they govern better,” said Lucia Carrion, a street vendor in Lima. “There is a lot of corruption. Someone has to stop a lot of corruption here in Peru.”
The pandemic has not only strained Peru’s medical infrastructure and cemeteries, left millions out of work, and highlighted the country’s longstanding inequality. It also deepened people’s mistrust of the government as it mismanaged the COVID-19 response and a secret vaccination campaign for well-connected people erupted into a national scandal.
Amid protests and allegations of corruption, the South American country passed three presidents in November. Some analysts warn that this election may be another turning point for people’s growing frustrations and lead to more political instability.
President Francisco Sagaste said after the vote that candidates should respect the results and ask their followers to refrain from protesting the result. Fujimori told her followers to be careful because “the margin is very small” while Castillo demanded that all ballot papers be reviewed “to ensure the genuine popular will of the Peruvian people”.
Fujimori, the former congresswoman, promised people various rewards, including a one-time $2,500 payment to each household with at least one victim of COVID-19. It also proposed distributing 40% of the tax on mineral, oil or gas extraction among families living near those areas.
Keiko Fujimori herself was imprisoned as part of a graft investigation although she was later released. Her father, Alberto Fujimori, ruled between 1990 and 2000 and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for corruption and the murder of 25 people. She promised to release him if she won.
Castillo was until recently a rural teacher in the third poorest region of the country, deep in the Andes. The son of illiterate peasants entered politics by leading a strike of teachers. While his stance on nationalizing key sectors of the economy has softened, he remains committed to rewriting the constitution that was approved under Fujimori’s father’s regime.
Both candidates oppose abortion and same-sex marriage.
Peru is the world’s second largest exporter of copper and mining accounts for nearly 10% of its GDP and 60% of its exports, so Castillo’s initial proposal to nationalize the country’s mining industry set off alarm bells among business leaders. But no matter who is chosen to succeed Sagaste on July 28, investors will remain fickle.
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