Peruvian Presidental Election Heading for a Runoff
Peru held its presidential election on Sunday. The leader only received 30.5% of the vote, so a runoff between the top two candidates will be held in June. The leader, Ollanta Humala, was a lieutenant colonel in the Peruvian army and was endorsed by the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.
Humala, 48, made promises similar to those of Keiko Fujimori: free nursery school and public education, state-funded school breakfasts and lunches, a big boost in the minimum wage, and pensions for all beginning at age 65.
He says he would respect international treaties and contracts, but many Peruvians don’t believe him.
Humala, who launched a bloodless, short-lived revolt against Alberto Fujimori just before the latter fled into exile in 2000, advocates rewriting the constitution, as Chavez and his leftist allies in Bolivia and Ecuador have done
His challenger will be the second-place candidate, Keiko Fujimori, who received 23.1% of the vote. Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is currently serving twenty-five years in prison in Peru for corruption and human rights abuses.
Keiko Fujimori constantly invoked her father during the campaign, running on his legacy of delivering essential services to Peru’s forgotten backwater and of being tough on crime. It’s a potent message in a nation of 30 million where one in three live on less than $3 a day and lack running water.
This election is not viewed particularly favorably by political observers.
Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has called the Humala-Fujimori runoff option “a choice between AIDS and terminal cancer,” given perceptions of their anti-democratic tendencies.
Yikes.