Peruvians to choose new president amid relentless pandemic – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

LIMA, Peru – (AP) – Amid a relentless coronavirus pandemic that has overwhelmed cemeteries, Peruvian voters on Sunday will choose between a political freshman who scared the business by promising to clean up key mining industries and a career politician whose father is a former president jailed for corruption and human rights abuses.

The polarizing runoff between country teacher Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori, who is making her third candidacy for the presidency, follows the admission by the Peruvian government that the death toll from the pandemic is at least 2.5 times higher than previously recognized. The jump brings the estimated death toll to more than 180,000 for a country about one-tenth the population of the United States.

Polls have shown that the two candidates are practically tied for the runoff election on Sunday. In the first round of 18 candidates, neither received more than 20% support and both are heavily opposed by sections of Peruvian society, leading some to view the election as the lesser of two evils.

While Castillo’s stance on nationalizing key sectors of the economy has waned, he remains determined to rewrite the constitution passed under Fujimori’s father’s regime. His rivals have compared his leftist politics to that of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Fujimori, a Conservative former Congressman, was arrested for a transplant exam but was later released. Her father, former President Alberto Fujimori, ruled between 1990 and 2000 and is serving a 25-year prison sentence for corruption and the killing of 25 people. She promised to free him if she won.

“She is the daughter of a corrupt man who supports everything bad her father has done,” said housewife Mirian Ortiz during a protest against Fujimori in the capital, Lima. Some protesters shouted “Fujimori never again” and others carried portraits of people who disappeared during Alberto Fujimori’s government.

The challenges that await the assumption of office on July 28th should not be overestimated.

Among Latin American countries, only Brazil and Mexico have reported higher deaths from COVID-19, and both have much larger populations. Peru’s vaccination campaign has made meager progress, and the pandemic has already pushed 3 million more people into poverty.

The winner will also face a divided Congress that will likely make it difficult to pass laws and may not even allow them to end their term in office. In November, Peru had three presidents in a single week after one was charged by Congress on corruption charges and protests forced his successor to resign.

“Both candidates are certainly unsuitable given the challenges the country will face,” said Claudia Navas, an analyst at global company Control Risks.

“We will see no light at the end of the tunnel on the management of the pandemic or the complex political environment because they will have several things against them, starting with a fragmented Congress. Fujimori will face resistance in the streets, Castillo will meet the resistance of the institutions (of the country). I mean they will be all alone, “said Navas.

Few expected Castillo to make it this far. As the son of illiterate farmers, he completed a degree in educational psychology at the Peruvian University of César Vallejo. He still lives in the third poorest district in the country, deep in the Andes, and was a country teacher until recently. He entered politics by leading a teachers’ strike.

While Fujimori’s father was a political outsider when he took office, she grew up in the halls of power. She attended Boston University and received her Masters from Columbia University in the United States. She later served as first lady during her father’s last six years in office.

Peru is the second largest copper exporter in the world and mining accounts for nearly 10% of its GDP and 60% of its exports. So Castillo’s original proposal to nationalize the country’s mining industry sounded the alarm bells.

But after getting into the runoff election, Castillo backed off his nationalization proposal and recently proposed renegotiating contracts with mining companies.

Fujimori, in turn, has pledged an “additional contribution” from the mining sector to fund irrigation and reservoirs in the rural communities in which it operates. It has also pledged to distribute 40% of a tax on mining, oil and gas production to poor families in these areas.

Meanwhile, Castillo said he would collect the largest national debt held by powerful groups in the mining, finance, telecommunications and aerospace industries. The 158 largest debts amount to more than 2.4 billion US dollars, according to government figures.

Both have promised Covid-19 vaccines for all Peruvians.

The country has counted more than 1.9 million coronavirus cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and has only fully vaccinated about 3.7% of its 32.5 million residents.

So many people have died since the pandemic began that some have been buried in secret graves around cemeteries that have run out of space. People’s anger over the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic only increased when an official document revealed that hundreds of wealthy and well-connected individuals, including a former president, had been secretly vaccinated.

Noam Lupu, associate director of the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University, said the lack of stable coalitions for the winner could result in the new president trying to rule alone and test the powers of the presidency while threats of impeachment could press him or her to undermine the country’s institutions in order to remain in office.

“I think there is great concern about the nature of the ideological extremism of the two candidates,” said Lupu. “Keiko Fujimori is obviously the daughter of the former dictator, so there are concerns about her commitment to democracy and the corruption scandals around her. And on the other hand, Pedro Castillo is quite unknown to many, we don’t know much about him, but his statements are certainly ideologically far left and not reassuring when it comes to democracy. Here, too, it is not clear who is the greater threat. “

___

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed in any way without permission.