The teacher Pedro Castillo, representative of the radical left, and the candidate of the populist right, Keiko Fujimori have qualified for the second round of the presidential election in Peru, according to almost final results made public Tuesday, April 13.

Far from bringing the country together after recurring political crises, the second round of the presidential election risks greatly polarizing Peru.

In recession due to the pandemic, shaken by repeated institutional crises, the last in November seeing three presidents parade in a week, the Andean country has been virtually ungovernable since 2016. 

Not to mention the mistrust that reigns between the population and its political representatives, while many of them are in the crosshairs of the justice system for countless corruption scandals.

Candidates at the antipodes

In the second round, on June 6, there will be two opposing candidates who only collected 32% of the votes on Sunday: the novice teacher Pedro Castillo, 51, and the experienced Keiko Fujimori, 45, unsuccessful candidate for the second round in 2011 and 2016. 

While one advocates economic liberalism, faithful to the Fujimorist current launched by his father, the former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), the trade unionist Pedro Castillo, who in 2017 took the lead of a strike movement teachers, advocates an active role for the state in economic matters, including recourse to nationalization.

He also defends a constitutional change to put an end to the abuses of liberalism.

Keiko Fujimori defends the current Constitution promulgated by his father in 1993 and which promotes the market economy.

The leader of Peru Libre, one of the few left-wing Peruvian parties that defends the regime of Venezuelan socialist president Nicolas Maduro, is also in favor of state control of the country's energy and mineral wealth (gas, gold, silver, copper, zinc, tin, lead and lithium).

The two candidates agree, however, on social conservatism: they are against abortion, defend the traditional family, and do not give more importance to the rights of the LGTBI community.

A corruption scandal 

If Keiko Fujimori still enjoys in part of the country the popularity of her father, whom many Peruvians admit to having defeated the far left guerrillas of the Shining Path, many denigrate her for the corruption scandal to which her name is attached to.

She has already spent 16 months in preventive detention and the prosecution has requested 30 years in prison against her as part of the investigation into the Odebrecht scandal, named after a Brazilian construction giant who admitted to having paid bribes. -vin to dozens of Latin American politicians.

The radical left leader who wears in all circumstances the traditional white hat of his hometown of Cajamarca says it bluntly: for him, this second round "is a competition between rich and poor (...) a struggle between boss and worker. , between master and slave ".

"The two candidates arouse great prejudices in the population, which materialize in anti-Fujimorism and anti-communism," said political analyst Augusto Alvarez Rodrich.

For him, "Peruvians are at a crossroads".

"Going for one or the other seems to be a choice between dengue and Covid-19".

Political scientist Carlos Meléndez stresses, however, that the polarization will not only be ideological but also geographical, between Lima and the opulent north coast against "the rest of the Andean and rural country".

"This polarization which is expressed territorially will also be a polarization of public opinion", adds Adriana Urrutia, head of the NGO Transparencia, recalling that "Peru is a deeply unequal country and that inequalities have been exacerbated by the pandemic ".

The official results will not be pronounced until the beginning of May by the National Election Jury (JNE) after the exhaustion of all remedies, but the two leading candidates can no longer be caught after the counting of more than 96% of the ballots. .

Like the presidential election, the Peru Libre parties of Pedro Castillo (17%) and Fuerza popular of Keiko Fujimori (12%) also won the legislative elections held on Sunday, after 90% of the votes were counted. bulletins.

Seven other parties have more than 5% of the vote.

With AFP

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