After a rollercoaster campaign that saw massive street protests and candidates disqualified and accused of corruption, the first round of Peru’s presidential election has failed to yield an outright victor.
The clear winner of round one was Keiko Fujimori, a former first lady and the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who’s currently serving a 25-year prison term for corruption and human rights violations. But having failed to garner more than 50 percent of the vote, she now faces a run-off against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former prime minister and finance minister.
This is something of a surprise. Recent polls had indicated that Veronika Mendoza, a left-of-center legislator running for the Frente Amplia party, was gaining momentum and on track for second place. But in the end she came a relatively weak third behind Kuczyunski, leaving Peruvians with a choice between the two establishment candidates.
But just because Fujimori and Kuczynski are both experienced fixtures of the center-right governing class doesn’t mean that their contest will be a quiet one.
Even though day-to-day politics in Peru has been relatively stable since the elder Fujimori’s reign ended in 2001, elections tend to be much more volatile and unpredictable. Inevitably, this periodically raises concerns that the country’s current political and economic stability is shakier than it seems.
