Analysis: Peru candidate Keiko Fujimori stalls in the polls while stirring up ghosts of communism

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Keiko Fujimori will lose the elections in Peru according to all polls, underlining the failure of a campaign focused on stirring up ghosts of communism while sending a strong message that her own figure is an obstacle for her to obtain the Presidency.

A month and a half before the second electoral round that will pit the far-right Fujimori against the far-left candidate Pedro Castillo, an unexpected opponent whose proposals also polarize the country, the daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) is trailing behind her rival with voting intentions some 11% to 20% lower.

Fujimori’s positive voting intentions are closer to those who plan to leave their vote blank or cancel their vote.

Her “antivoto” -those who say they would never vote for her- is around 55 % of the population, 20 points above her opponent. Among her voters, the loyalty of the suffrage is weaker than that of the followers of the rural teacher who is competing against her for the presidency.

Despite the overwhelming media support she receives from the Peruvian press, she is critical of the radical proposals for change of the Peru Libre party of Castillo, who seems to have found an echo among the most impoverished and majority sectors of Peruvian society.

LONG CAMPAIGN

Analysts and political scientists agree that the electoral campaign for the June 6 runoff is still long and that Peruvians tend to decide their vote at the last minute, which gives Fujimori a small margin.

The candidate, who already lost the presidential runoff elections in 2011 and 2016, willl be helped by the fact that Castillo will be under the spotlight and will have to concretize more of his proposals, with the subsequent erosion possible.

But for Fujimori to win, analysts agree that she will have to make a substantial change in her campaign and proposals.

“The anti-communist message in these weeks does not work for Keiko probably because it appeals to a public that is already convinced – Lima’s middle and upper classes – and she does not convince the great majority that does not see her as an option,” said sociologist Sandro Venturo.

That, together with the “terruqueo” – the accusations of terrorist links that the Peruvian right-wing systematically employs to refer to any leftist stance – has proven to have a very short margin or even to be detrimental and does not address the underlying problem of her candidacy: that Keiko does not offer confidence to the electorate.

ANTIVOTE

“Castillo is a new candidate who generates a lot of interest. Keiko is a candidate for the third time, and she has been running many campaigns where she has been getting all the good and bad things out of her.

Venturo expressed this problem in another way: “For a message to be successful, it needs two conditions: that the messenger has credibility and that the message responds to expectations. She is a messenger without credibility, and secondly, she does not respond to the concerns of the vast majority of Peruvians. If she maintains that posture, she will not grow and may even shrink.”

Peruvians, plunged into deep health, the economic and political crisis is asking for a change. Still, Keiko is presenting herself as a full-fledged guarantor of the neoliberal model established by her father. With that, she is “closing the door to say that she has the experience, that she could reform or improve things and that with those materials she could meet the demands of the people,” said Venturo.

Thus, Keiko would have a chance if people managed to perceive that she recognizes how badly she handled her parliamentary majority and her confrontation with presidents Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) and Martin Vizcarra (2018-2020) that unleashed the deep political crisis the country is going through.

“If she would recognize that the vast majority of people reject her, she would advance quite a bit. And if she could steal issues from Castillo and present herself as a great reformist who has experience and technicians, she would have more options. But knowing Fujimorism, those conditions are remote”, indicated the sociologist.

Torrado agreed with the analysis by pointing out that particularly the young people are waiting “for her to apologize for what she has done in these years” and “to assume commitments.” “If that does not happen, she will not achieve what she needs,” the analyst affirmed.

CASTILLO IN THE SPOTLIGHT

On the contrary, Castillo seems to have connected with the hopes of the people and shows “the movie that the people want to see”. However, now he will have difficulty when it is his turn to present his technical teamsm to show whether he has the organization to assume the government, reasoned Venturo.

Torrado notes that Castillo also has a sizeable “antivoto” and that in Peru, other candidates have already won while being extensively rejected among the population, so Keiko “does not have everything closed and she has a way to go”, more so now that her rival will have to expose himself more.

In that sense, Castillo should maintain a profile that reassures broad sectors, make an effort to neutralize the “terruqueo” label and stay “close to the people”, since that is something that has worked “well” for him.

“It will also be important to see what government teams both will have. People do not want improvisation. Those will have to generate trust,” he concluded.