In Peru, there will be a second round between Pedro Castillo and …

From Lima

The official results confirm a second round between left and right. In this case, between a radical left and the extreme right. Left-wing teacher and union leader Pedro Castillo, and Keiko Fujimori, daughter and political heir of former far-right dictator Alberto Fujimori, currently in prison, will take part in the vote in June. sentenced to 25 years for crimes against humanity and various charges of corruption. Once again, for the third election in a row, Fujimori will, like an endless nightmare, compete for the presidency in the last resort.

The choice between eighteen candidates leaves two who will go to the second round with a weak vote. The official results of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) at 88.8% confirm the first place of Castillo with 18.88%. In second place is Keiko, with 13.25, who takes a slight advantage, but who is considered final, right-wing economist Hernando de Soto, who owns 11.90 percent, and ultra-conservative and religious Opus fanatic Dei Rafael López Aliaga, who likes calling themselves “Porky,” with 11.86 percent. A quick tally based on a representative sample of votes confirms Keiko in the second round. The moderate left candidate Verónika Mendoza is sixth with 7.81%, behind the centrist Yonhy Lescano, 9.11%.

Castillo is linked to the political heirs of the Maoist armed group Sendero Luminoso, which staged an internal war in the 1980s and 1990s. Castillo rejects this relationship. During the teachers’ strike he led in 2017 and which launched him on the national scene, the government of then President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski accused him of being linked to the Movement for Amnesty and the fundamental rights (Movadef), a group which collects the political heritage of the Shining Path and whose main flag is to request the amnesty of Abimael Guzmán, head of Sendero, imprisoned since 1992 with a life sentence.

“They stigmatized us,” is Castillo’s response to this accusation. He shoots against corruption in the political class, but the leader of the Peru Free party that appoints him as president, Vladimir Cerrón, was found guilty of corruption during his tenure as governor of the Andean region of Junín. VSAstillo said he would summon the base of the parties and not the leaders to seek support for the second round.

The surprising vote for Castillo reflects the rejection of a discredited political class to which the professor and union member does not belong, the frustration and exhaustion due to the deep inequalities, abandonment and marginalization of a great part of the country, especially in the Andean regions where Castillo largely wins, and the rage against an incapable State which looks elsewhere in the face of the serious problems of these populations. It was not an avalanche of votes, but it was enough to put him at the top of these elections.

“The right has allowed Castillo to develop freely to neutralize the candidacy of Verónika Mendoza, from a moderate left, which has been severely attacked by this right. They expected the two to cancel each other out, but what they achieved was to launch the most radical bid for the first place, ”he said. PageI12 historian and political analyst Nelson Manrique, professor at the Catholic University.

Manrique underlines that in favor of Castillo he also played his image of “humble rural teacher, which is very attractive and channeled the discontent of the popular sectors, in particular in the mountains”.. “The candidacy of Verónika Mendoza – he adds – has come to be seen more as a candidacy of the left of the middle classes rather than of the popular sectors, which is why Castillo has made progress in these popular sectors.”

Castillo won the first round, but it got complicated in the second final round. “All the questions that the right did not ask him in the first round, they will ask him in this second round. The right will launch a ruthless offensive against him. It has several weak flanks. There is the relationship of his union with Movadef, the legal face of Sendero. I am not saying that Castillo is a transmitter, but I am saying that his union organization had the support of Movadef in the teachers’ strike. There are the corruption charges against Cerrón, leader of his party. And they will seriously question the viability of their proposals, ”says Manrique.

By political affinity, Keiko would have the support of the voters of the right-wing candidates Hernando de Soto and Rafael López Aliaga, respectively third and fourth. However, the fascist López Aliaga, religious fanatic of Opus Dei, did not exclude supporting Castillo, whom he praised “for being pro-life and pro-family”. Leftist Castillo has a conservative agenda on citizen rights issues, which rejects gender equality policies and rejects the legalization of abortion and equal marriage, bringing him closer to this ultra-conservative right on these issues. .

Verónika Mendoza has opened the doors to a dialogue with Castillo, with whom he agrees in his questioning of the neoliberal model and the change of the Fujimori Constitution, but with whom he has great differences in the subjects of the rights of the citizens. Lescano distanced himself from the two candidates who went to the second round.

“The most likely scenario is a triumph for Keiko. The votes on the right added are in the majority, ”says Manrique. Keiko announced clemency for her father and threatened an authoritarian government, in the Fujimori style. Prosecuted for money laundering, an electoral victory would free her from the trial. If I win, it would be the end of the anti-corruption process. “Keiko is the greatest threat to democracy,” says the historian.

Whoever becomes president will not have a parliamentary majority and he will have to face a Congress atomized into many small benches, which would be eleven. Castillo would only have 28 lawmakers in a unicameral parliament of 130 members, Keiko only 16. But the scenario is more complicated for Castillo because the various right-wing groups added together would form a majority in Congress, which would make things very difficult for an eventual government.

“I see that it is difficult for a Castillo government to last with a Congress dominated by various right-wing groups which would keep its government in permanent crisis until its withdrawal and seizure of power in Congress,” warns Manrique.

A complicated scenario opens up in Peru. The instability that the country has suffered in recent years threatens to continue or even worsen. The nightmare of a Fujimori restoration two decades after the fall of the Fujimori dictatorship has put democracy at risk. The alternative that could avoid it is a candidate for radical left-wing discourse, but at the same time ultra-conservative on social issues, who denies the rights of citizens, a candidate who generates fears that will be exploited by the right.