BThe pending case is over: Six weeks after the second round of elections, the Election Tribunal declared the left-wing candidate Pedro Castillo as the new president of Peru. As the election court announced on Monday, the candidate of the Marxist-Leninist party Perú Libre won 50.12% of the vote. Right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori won a 49.87% approval rate in the extremely tense second round of elections.
In the past few weeks, the election court had to deal with some complaints and appeals, especially complaints and appeals from the Fujimori camp, which is why the announcement of the winner was delayed by about one and a half months. In the end, the number of votes between the two opponents was only slightly higher than 44,000 votes.
Victory for the political outsider
Castillo’s election victory was a resounding slap in the face of Lima’s political elite. As an absolute outsider, he won the first round of voting in April, and before the start of the campaign, the 51-year-old did not even have a Twitter account.
He comes from a farmer’s family in Chota province in the north of the country and led the teachers’ strike in 2017. The government accused him of ties to sympathizers of the left-wing rebel group Shining Path. However, it is said that when he was young, he also joined a peasant self-defense organization to fend off the rebels.
Little is known about his political beliefs and his government team.He announced that if he wins the election, he will establish a socialist country, control the media and Constitutional Court abolition. During the election campaign, he also campaigned for constitutional reform, pension system restructuring, and nationalization of the natural gas industry.
After the first signs of a left-wing candidate’s victory emerged, the stock exchange collapsed. After Castillo’s victory, observers worried about the capital flight of foreign investors. So far, Peru is considered an extremely free market in the region.The economic adviser to the future president quickly assured Castillo that he had more ties with the former Social Democratic president of Brazil Luis Inacio Lula da Silva It is different from Hugo Chavez, the former socialist head of state of Venezuela.
In fact, Castillo is a stopgap measure. He was only elected as the top candidate of the Marxist-Leninist party Perú Libre because the leader of the party, Vladimir Cerrón, was convicted of corruption and was barred from running.
Election dates in horses
Castillo represents rural Peru and people are far away from the city center, said Gonzalo Gang, a political scientist at El Comercio newspaper. In particular, farmers, especially indigenous people, have hardly benefited from Peru’s considerable economic growth in recent years and often continue to live in extreme poverty. Castillo took part in rural elections on horseback, and appeared many times in traditional clothes, sombrero and poncho.
In addition, he must have benefited from the deep dislike of the former president by many Peruvians. Alberto Fujimori Her political daughter Keiko has never seriously distanced herself from herself. The former ruler has served 25 years in prison for gross violations of human rights. During his tenure (1990-2000), the Fujimori Security Forces took severe action against the left and alleged subversive forces, and the parliament was overthrown. In addition, tens of thousands of indigenous women were forcibly sterilized.
After his parents divorced, Keiko Fujimori has been considered the first lady for many years, and has accompanied his father on many trips abroad. If the election wins, she wants to pardon her father.
Conservative family portrait
But even if Castillo and Fujimori support the extremes of opposition on the political level, their sociopolitical views are not far apart: Castillo also represents a conservative view of the family and opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. Like his neoliberal opponents, he relies on the development of natural resources and does not pay much attention to protecting the environment or human rights.
The challenge facing the new president is huge: Peru has been particularly affected by the new crown pandemic. It has one of the highest death rates in the world, and its economy collapsed by 12.9%. In the interior of the country, the separatist group of the guerrilla organization Sendero Luminoso (Luminous Way) is still active.
Last year, fierce conflicts also occurred between the government and Congress. Although the Castillo Peruvian Liberal Party is the most powerful party in the parliament, it does not have its own majority. The Congress has far-reaching powers in Peru. Since 2018, lawmakers have chased after the three presidents to step down. If Castillo fails to successfully integrate most of the fragmented party structure, the next power contest should come soon.
