Will Peru get out of the political deadlock?
Presidential candidate of the Free Peru party Pedro Castillo with rival candidate Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party, in Arequipa, Peru, on Sunday, May 30, 2021. AP - Martin Mejia
Text by: Romain Lemaresquier Follow
6 mins
More than 25 million Peruvian voters are called on this Sunday, June 6 to choose their president for the next 5 years.
Pedro Castillo, teacher and trade unionist created a surprise in the first round.
He presents himself as being of the extreme left, with a program inspired, he says, by communism.
Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, is more on the far right.
Two populist candidates in a polarized country plagued by chronic political instability.
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Will the presidential election allow Peru to break the political deadlock in which the country has been for years?
This is what is at stake in the second round of the presidential election which will be held this Sunday, June 6.
The
results of the first round
of this presidential election had already been a real surprise both in Peru and abroad. The candidate Pedro Castillo, an unknown a few months before (even on a part of the national political scene), managed to impose himself, admittedly with a little less than eighteen percent of the votes, but nobody expected him at this level. As for Keiko Fujimori, currently prosecuted for acts of corruption (who has spent several
months in detention
), six months before the ballot nobody envisaged that the daughter of the former president Alberto Fujimori (author of a " autogolpe ”“ a self-coup ”in 1992) could pass the first round (with, it should be noted, barely more than thirteen percent of the vote).
The choice of extremes
Peruvian voters therefore opted for the candidates of the extremes.
A logical choice, according to Lissell Quiroz, doctor of history and professor of Latin American studies at the University of Cergy: “
This polarization is explained in my opinion by a very important distrust of the population vis-à-vis traditional parties.
This explains the growth of Pedro Castillo in voting intentions and the place he occupies, especially in rural areas.
Regarding Keiko Fujimori, the vote comes from urban areas that demand more security.
Because there are two central issues at the moment in Peruvian politics: corruption and insecurity.
And Keiko Fujimori has this image of someone who is going to put the country back in order.
All this explains this vote which has polarized towards the extremes: the extreme left and the extreme right.
"
A polarization accentuated by the campaign of the second round
Since the resignation of President
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in March 2018
for his links with Odebrecht, Peru has experienced a waltz of its presidents. Following the
dismissal of Martin Vizcarra
by Parliament in November 2020 (for “moral incapacity”), Manuel Merino and then Francisco Sagasti succeed him. Three presidents in a few weeks and given the candidates present in the second round, very few people think that after this Sunday the country will be able to find a certain stability, explains Arthur Morenas, researcher in political science at the University of Strasbourg, associated with the French Institute of Andean Studies and the Institute of the Americas:
“Already before the first lap it seemed complicated.
Today, given the way the campaign has evolved, the strong polarization that we have seen in this second round campaign, it seems quite complicated to me.
"
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And this is not the only factor of instability recalls Arthur Morenas:
“There is also the fact in particular that Parliament will be relatively fragmented, which is usual given the voting system.
So, in my opinion, the way out of the political crisis is not possible in the short term.
But it will also largely depend on the leadership that the elected candidate can take.
"
The weight of the undecided and the blank or null vote
Two hours before the ballot - which will be closely monitored at the regional level and not only - many voters remain undecided in a country where voting is compulsory.
And it is these undecided and those who would decide to vote white who could well tip the scales one way or the other.
Because Pedro Castillo has only two points in advance in the last polls, a difference which falls within the margin of error.
►
To read also
: Presidential in Peru: voters say they are divided between "two catastrophic options"
For Arthur Morenas, the weight of the choice of the undecided and the abstention, even if the vote is compulsory, will play a more crucial role than ever:
“Already in the first round we had a level of participation which was much lower than in previous years, largely because of the pandemic. Previously we were around 80% participation, while in this first round we were around 70%. We already had a lower participation. I think that part of these voters will make their decision in the last hours of the campaign. There was a movement that did not last long, of people who said "let's all vote white" to cancel the election and redo it since, if they exceed sixty percent I believe, there is the possibility to reorganize the election. But given current voting intentions this will not be the case. So abstention,the blank or no vote and the choice of the undecided will be key and very important variables in this ballot, probably more than in previous years. "
This Sunday, more than twenty-five million Peruvians are called upon to speak out in an attempt to find a solution to the political impasse in which the country has been for years.
A situation which should unfortunately not really change in the short term, the fault of a strong polarization of a country which must choose between on the one hand: a candidate of the extreme left who wishes in particular to launch a major program of nationalizations, and of the other: an ultra-conservative candidate who has been waiting for years to occupy the post that was her father's.
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See also:
in Peru, concerns of feminists and the LGBT community about the coming five-year term
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