Presidential election: Anyone could be Peru’s next president

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – It’s time for the outsiders. Or the supposed outsiders. In Peru, with non-existent traditional parties and a crossroads of acronyms impossible to memorize, anyone could be the country’s next president. Six candidates are tied for the lead in all polls, with 24 hours to go until the presidential election, with almost a technical tie. None of the candidates exceeds 13% of voting intentions.

Among them is the Fujimorist leader, investigated for corruption and pledging an “iron hand”, the celibate who calls himself Porky and professes to be in love with the Virgin, the professor, and unionist who vows to overthrow the Constitutional Court, and the conservative who will make a Peruvian veterinarian a minister who tested a supposed vaccine against covid-19 on animals, without any sanitary control.

The second round, in June, will be contested by the two who manage to get votes this Sunday slightly higher than their competitors. “Terrible” is the word Peruvians have repeated the most in recent days.

The polls show such close results between six candidates that the margin of error is greater than the distance between them. The only certainty is that on Sunday, anything can happen. And whatever happens, it will be different from what would have happened a week ago or what would happen next. No candidate has managed to arouse any passion in an electorate stunned by the collection of names that the polls show.

In the last few days, everyone has begun to look to Pedro Castillo, who did not reach 5% of the vote five days ago and is now in second place behind Keiko Fujimori. Castillo, a 51-year-old teacher who campaigns wearing a wide-brimmed hat typical of the Andean region where he grew up, became known in 2017 for leading protests against periodic teacher evaluations. In Lima, where 8.5 of Peru’s 32 million people live, the teacher, considered part of the radical left, barely tops 4% of voting intentions.

Read: Tired of politicians, Peruvians skeptical ahead of close presidential election

Until two weeks ago, almost everyone would have bet that Yonhy Lescano, the populist leader from the center, would be in the second round, but his chances have been fading. “All the candidates are very weak. They all start to rise at some point. When that happens, the others start to attack him and deflate him,” explains political scientist and professor at the Pontifical Catholic University Martin Tanaka.

Amid the generalized disenchantment, the final decision will be at the voting. A window of opportunity is being taken advantage of by Keiko Fujimori, leader by a minimum percentage in the latest polls. Two months ago, nobody pointed her out as a promising candidate.

The hardliners of Fujimori may define the future of the country once again. However, they are increasingly fewer in number. They are beginning to turn to new conservative options due to their leader’s political wear and tear, mired in a corruption case.

The Prosecutor’s Office is asking for her 30-year imprisonment. The option generates fear in more than half of the electorate, who totally reject her and state that they would never vote for her. But even if she painstakingly surpasses 10%, this could be enough to go to a second round for the third time [in the previous two, she ended up losing].

To understand why this is such an exceptional situation, it is necessary to review the last five years of Peruvian politics. In 2016, the Lava Jato corruption case’s tentacles made Peru shudder when the illegal operations between the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht and Peruvian governments between 2005 and 2014 were discovered. Former presidents Alejandro Toledo, Alan García, and Ollanta Humala were backed into a corner.

García committed suicide, shooting himself in the head as he was about to be arrested in 2019. Former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski was also involved. In that same period, Keiko Fujimori was jailed for three months and is now continuing to campaign on parole for illegal financing.

And the same fate befell other elected officials, from Lima’s mayors to parliamentarians, mired in systemic corruption. “Whoever we elect ends up in prison,” says journalist Rosa María Palacios.

Nor do traditional parties play a real role in elections, amid a sea of acronyms created ad hoc for the candidates of the moment or that embrace a particular leader supported by groups of the most varied interests. No grassroots, no militancy, no ideology or apparatus. “What little institutionalized politics existed, was pulverized in the last few years so totally improvised and adventurous characters end up being the protagonists,” says Tanaka.

Other political forces with a stronger structure, such as the leftist Veronika Mendoza, who also has a chance, cannot take off. Partly because of the continuous attacks by conservative candidates, who link her to chavismo, partly because of what analysts see as a lack of connection with society’s expectations. “People are outraged, and in this context of polarization, the anti-system candidates are growing strongly,” explains Alfredo Torres, president of the electoral research institute Ipsos Perú.

In the final stretch of the polls, the country is holding its breath. According to polls, the percentage of those who choose to cast blank votes remains high, reaching 28%. Political scientist Tanaka summarizes the feeling of many: “I have spent the last 15 years saying that we have a severe problem. But it turns out that for the last 15 years we were England, this is now worse than we could have imagined; it’s zero level of representation.”

A no-party election

Of the six candidates with the best chance of making it to the second round, only Yonhy Lescano belongs to one of the three political parties founded in the first decades of the 20th century. Acción Popular was created by former president and architect Fernando Belaúnde Terry, a right-wing politician who promoted its development through public works.

Popular Force, headed by Fujimori, is the fourth name for which this strain runs for president. Her father first came to the presidency through Cambio 90, which he founded; later, the party was renamed Alianza 2000 in this year’s elections, and Force 2011, when she first ran for president.

The others are political groups that have recently obtained electoral registration, do not advocate any political doctrine or have diffuse values, and reappear only in elections: either to serve as a rent party or to contest elections.

Candidates Hernando De Soto, Pedro Castillo, and Verónika Mendoza are running under the acronyms of groups they have joined or allied with in the past year. López Aliaga even changed the name of the party he was leader of until a few years ago because its main leader is involved in corruption investigations: National Solidarity to Popular Renewal.

Source: El Pais