America Peru closes an electoral campaign marked by the enormous numbers of the pandemic
America At least 18 dead in Peru due to a Shining Path terrorist attack
Peru decides this Sunday with whom it will jump into the void:
with a unionist from the radical left or with the daughter of the dictator, populist and rightist
. 68% of Peruvians did not vote for Pedro Castillo or Keiko Fujimori in the first round, and many will do so reluctantly today to prevent the extremist they fear the most from winning,
because they know that both are a danger to democracy
. Polarization, so hackneyed in half the world, has reached heights as high as its mountains in the Andean country.
The end between the two candidates is so close, a technical tie according to the latest polls,
that the almost one million votes of emigrants abroad appears as decisive
.
Something that is not news either: the leader of Fuerza Popular (FP) lost in 2016 by 0.24% against Pedro Pablo Kuzcynski and in 2011, by 2.90% against Ollanta Humala.
Beyond arithmetic,
Castillo has established himself as the candidate of deep Peru, between the south and the Andes
, who feels ignored by Lima and who considers that he has not benefited from macroeconomic growth so far this century, with a burgeoning middle class also hit by the pandemic.
Anti-Fujimorism, rooted in much of the country, is also another of its great supporters
.
On the other side, Fujimori has added part
of the capital's political
establishment
to his hard core of followers
,
with intellectuals of the weight of Vargas Llosa and with personalities from different spheres
, who do not stop joining his campaign.
In all this block the fear prevails that the union teacher will impose a communist regime in the country.
A Fujimori voter, in Lima LIZ TASA / REUTERS
Both economic proposals are absolutely equidistant.
Castillo,
who has been forced to soften his plans to ban imports to favor national production
, is committed to a massive presence of the State.
Fujimori maintains his free market agenda with populist overtones, which includes all kinds of bonds to get out of the crisis.
In what they do resemble is in the agenda of social rights, both retrograde.
Neither abortion, nor homosexual marriage, nor euthanasia, nor gender policy or anything like it, added to the machismo that Castillo does not hide.
"He is a macho Leninist," punishes Fujimori for his part,
who has not hesitated to appear on television with his young daughters on the eve of elections
.
Authoritarian appetites
The main question is whether both will keep promises and agreements or once they are in power they will display their authoritarian appetites.
Parliament, which in recent years has become a symbol of political evil,
is atomized and either of the two will need the support of other parties
.
Corruption is precisely Keiko's main fault, over which an accusation for money laundering and for leading a criminal organization hangs, for which the Prosecutor's Office claims up to 30 years in prison.
Who may be the first woman to lead the country has already suffered more than a year in prison
.
It remains to be seen if, if she wins the Fujimori electoral battle today, she will be protected by Article 117 of the Constitution, by which she can only be charged during the presidential term for treason or for dissolving Congress.
There are legal opinions for all expenses, since the judicial process is prior to their possible access to Pizarro's chair.
Castillo, who has not held public office,
also suffers the whip of corruption in his environment
.
The leader of Peru Libre (PL), the party that has welcomed him, is former governor Vladimir Cerrón, an admirer of Venezuela and Cuba and who was dismissed for his corrupt practices.
Another of the elected PL congressmen, Guillermo Bermejo, under judicial focus is Guillermo Bermejo, accused of alleged links with Shining Path terrorists.
Castillo has repeated ad nauseam
that he is neither a senderista nor a communist
, but the fear that Peru will become a new Venezuela has managed to shorten the distances between the two candidates, especially in the north of the country and in Lima.
The latest statements by the primary school teacher at the end of the campaign, in which he anticipated that as soon as he came to power he would impose a decree to expel "those who have come to disrespect" within 72 hours, scared the community Venezuelan emigrants, more than a million in Peru.
The criollos once again felt singled out by the leftist
, who had already threatened to expel the criollos who committed crimes in an attempt to distance himself from Nicolás Maduro.
"
Castillo is a sea of contradictions, he carries unpresentable people in his backpack and his economic proposal is terrifying
. But Keiko has had open signal television at his whim and that had only been seen in the last years of the Fujimorato. That also scares" , sentence in political analyst Gonzalo Banda.
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