Peru: technical tie between promises and fear

The closing of the campaign confirmed the same uncertainties and fears ahead of election Sunday, when the polls will open for Peruvians to decide between two populist extremisms in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed more than 180,000 lives..

Several crises one on top of the other, as if it were a matrioshka doll: the economic one in the heat of the coronavirus and the political one, which has swept away three presidents in a single legislature and has led its citizens to boredom.

The staging was the one sought by both contenders. The leftist Pedro Castillo managed to fill the Plaza del Dos de Mayo in Lima, territory of his rival, and the rightist Keiko Fujimori sealed the truce with those who fought against her father, the dictator Alberto Fujimori, with an embrace with Álvaro Vargas Llosa, son of the Nobel Prize.

The latest polls confirm that they are fighting vote by vote in this final stretch of the campaign. According to the average of six polls, including those by Datum and Ipsos, Castillo maintains a minimal advantage over Keiko: 50.1% compared to 49.9%, in an obvious technical tie that will be decided on Sunday. The last two presidential elections were also decided by a few thousand votes..

“We are going to be respectful of this Constitution and its institutions until the people decide,” said the trade unionist from Peru Libre from the balcony of the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP).. Castillo, who has softened proposals such as the ban on imports (“yes -they will be maintained- but with priority for national production”), proposes in his government plan the convening of a Constituent Assembly, key in the Bolivarian manual for the of all the powers of the State.

Castillo had the support of Verónika Mendoza, leader of Juntos por el Perú and official candidate of the Puebla Group, and spoke with former Uruguayan president Pepe Mújica, in another attempt to soften his radical positions..

A few kilometers away, in the popular Villa El Salvador, Keiko staged the reunion with old enemies with his own brother, Kenji Fujimori, who have been at odds since the breakup of the Fuerza Popular (FP) parliamentary group in 2017, when the now leader of Cambio 21 refused to remove the then president, Pedro Pablo Kuczyinski. FP parliamentarians have actively participated in congressional attacks against presidents, one of the reasons, along with corruption, for the national weariness with political parties.

“The budget does not matter if there is recurrent control, there is no questioning,” Keiko assured her audience. On the dictator’s daughter, who was in prison for more than a year, weighs a judicial process in which the prosecution proposes 30 years in prison for corruption.

“With Castillo, in truth, we don’t know what will happen. In his entourage there is a big internal chongo (mess), improvisation and little expertise. With Keiko, on the other hand, we know quite well what is going to happen. The campaign made it very clear again”, summarizes sociologist Juan Luis Dammert.