Peru: Tight and unpredictable elections are coming …

From Lima

Peru enters final week of electoral campaign for most contested and unpredictable presidential and parliamentary elections in memory. In the midst of the severe crisis caused by the pandemic, which these days is hitting the country with special force, and a high level of political discredit due to corruption allegations involving six former presidents and other senior leaders, including four presidential candidates, it is also the election with the weakest support for the main candidates and the strongest fragmentation of the vote.

A week before the elections, the only certainty is that there will be a second round, to be held in June. According to two polls published this Sunday, the latest polls that can be published in the country before the April 11 elections, there are six candidates with the possibility of going to the second round. Everything is very tight.

For the pollster Ipsos, in first place, former congressman Yonhy Lescano, with 12.1%, According to a secret ballot simulation he performed with a card equal to the one that will be used on election day. The second is neoliberal economist Hernando de Soto, with 11.5%. Third place goes to leftist candidate Verónika Mendoza, with 10.2%. Next come former center-right footballer George Forsyth with 9.8% and Keiko Fujimori with 9.3%. Given the margin of error, this is a fivefold technical link. In this voting simulation, 17.3% voted blank or imperfect.

The Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) also released a survey on Sunday. Keiko Fujimori and Hernando de Soto are tied for first place with 9.8%. Third is the far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga with 8.4%, fourth Yonhy Lescano with 8.2% and fifth place Verónika Mendoza with 7.3%. Also a quintuple technical draw, but with a changed name. The undecided reach 28%.

The two surveys coincide in a growth by economist Hernando de Soto in this final stretch of the campaign, which leaves him well positioned for the home stretch. It is the one who climbs the most. Paradoxically, De Soto, the oldest candidate at 79, is the one who does best among young people, according to the IEP. The right-wing economist, who in 1990 was part of the team that launched the presidential candidacy of Mario Vargas Llosa, who was later economic advisor to Alberto Fujimori, who in this election defeated the writer and imposed a reform neoliberal based on authoritarianism, and which In 2011 and 2016 he supported the candidacy of Keiko Fujimori, he has his main electoral base in Lima.

Porky, ”with whom he disputes the same electoral space, had a disastrous performance in his participation on Wednesday, reading all his speeches, his head buried in his papers, tangled and stammering, seems to have ended up favoring the economist. “Porky”, the 60-year-old “Peruvian Bolsonaro”, is entering the decisive phase with a downward trend.

Both pollsters also agree on a drop from Lescano, who for weeks had been a relatively comfortable pointer and that while Ipsos continues to place him first, he no longer has his second-round pass assured, as it seemed until a few days ago. Lescano, 62, has been a congressman for the center-right Acción Popular party for 18 years. Against the leadership of his party, in this campaign, he questioned the neoliberal model and proposed reforms, without however really proposing a change of model, which, in a scenario dominated by right-wing speeches, placed him in the center-left. in economic terms, but in social aspects, it is located on the right, with conservative positions.

Verónika Mendoza, Ensemble’s candidate for Peru, who at 40 is running for the second time for the presidency, is the main figure of the left in these elections, in which there are three candidates from this political sector. He had an outstanding performance in the debate last Monday, the day he had to participate. A week earlier, she had been the clear winner, according to analysts and a poll, of a debate organized by a television channel between five candidates. After this first debate began to mount, and with this growth, the attacks against him from the mainstream media were intensified, which again stirred up fear on the left and the ghosts of Hugo Chávez, Maduro and of Venezuela to repeat that “yes, the left wins, we will become another Venezuela”.

In 2016, Mendoza was in third place with 18.7%, very close to moving on to the second round, which he did not get because a radical left candidacy got four percent and won the votes he needed to get to the final elections. This time, that story can be repeated. In this last section, the candidacy of radical teacher leader Pedro Castillo has surprisingly increased, which rose to 6.6%, according to the two aforementioned polls, gaining support especially in the Andean and rural areas, a growth which is eroding the base. election of Verónika in Mendoza. .

In her third attempt to get Fujimori back to power, Keiko, the 45-year-old daughter of jailed ex-dictator Fujimori, who is on trial for money laundering, has lost much of the support she had in her. 2011 and 2016 Elections., but, with everyone very low, he maintains possibilities of going to the second round, as happened in these two other elections, in which he lost in this last instance.

Taking advantage of his popularity and playing to be the new figure against the political class, ex-footballer George Forsyth, 38, spent several months in the first place, but began to drop when his public and media appearances to expose his proposals revealed his notorious conspiracy weakness. He managed to stop his fall and recover a bit, which is why he is still in the game.

“Hernando de Soto has the advantage of having grown to last, and when you grow up in the end, the criticisms they make can be less harmful. Lescano, although something has fallen, is better positioned than the others as his ambiguity allows him to gain both left and right voices. Forsyth is more central and that can help him. Although Keiko Fujimori appears first in the IEP survey, her level of rejection is the highest of all and it complicates her. Verónika Mendoza has grown up, but in the same way Pedro Castillo has also grown from her left and that may leave her out of the second round. Castillo is growing up in this final phase because there is a radical vote that has not been covered. I see it is very difficult for López Aliaga to get to the second round. He had a growth and it drew attention to him and there his clear weaknesses appeared and he started to go down, ”he stressed. PageI12 Fernando Tuesta, political scientist at the Catholic University.

For Tuesta, “this is the election with the highest level of uncertainty that we have ever known”. “In this last week where there will be no ballot, we are going to enter the dark tunnel.”