Late surge to keep Peru’s Fujimori family from power

In a knife-edge election voters in Peru look to have blocked the return to power of the controversial Fujimori family following a last-minute surge of support for 77-year-old Wall Street veteran Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in Sunday’s presidential election.

With almost 90 per cent of votes counted Mr Kuczynski held a small but steady lead over Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori who is serving a 25-year prison term for human rights abuses carried out during his decade of rule that ended in 2000.

Mr Kuczynski’s narrow lead of 50.52 per cent against 49.48 per cent for Fujimori meant he was not yet declared the winner, though local analysts said it would be difficult for her to reverse the result with so few votes left to count.

It was clear Kuczynski, whose reputation is that of a dour technocrat, had benefited from a national mobilisation organised in the last stretch of the campaign. This was designed to stop Fujimori from winning and possibly using the presidency to pardon her father.

Having won only 21 per cent in April’s first round, economic liberal Kuczynski benefited from the backing of Peru’s left. Its leader Verónika Mendoza had called on those who supported her in the first round to back him in order to prevent the Fujimoris’return to power after 16 years.

White elite

While Kuczynski is a member of Peru’s little-loved white elite, many progressives saw him as the lesser evil. Fujimori’s promise to bring back the death penalty for child rapists sparked concerns that her presidency might be a rerun of her father’s authoritarian rule which defeated a Maoist guerrilla insurgency but later collapsed in a welter of corruption scandals.

The late anti-Fujimori surge was a repeat of the one that helped defeat her in 2011 when the beneficiary was outgoing president Ollanta Humala, a nationalist former military officer.

Ironically, Kuczynski had backed Fujimori then as the economically sound candidate after his elimination in the first round.

Her campaign this time was also undermined by allegations that one of her closest lieutenants was involved in drug trafficking and used the proceeds from cocaine exports to finance her failed 2011 bid.

Open to dialogue

Peru’s electoral body appealed for “patience and prudence” before it could formally declare a winner but Kuczynski, known universally by his initials PPK, greeted supporters from a balcony at his campaign headquarters on Sunday night, saying he was happy “because we want a government that is democratic and open to dialogue” as his supporters chanted “dictatorship never again”.

If confirmed as winner he will have to govern with a congress dominated by Fujimori’s Popular Force party and a solid left-wing bloc that helped elect him but which is ideologically opposed to his market-friendly policies.

Kuczynski’s party took just 18 of the 130 seats in the chamber, meaning he will face an uphill fight as he seeks to implement his programme which includes a campaign against endemic corruption and the promise of better public services for the country’s poorest, largely indigenous, communities.

But his promise to cut red tape for mining projects in the mineral-rich Andes could stoke an increase in social tensions between multinational mining companies and local communities who say they must pay the environmental cost of such projects but see little of the benefits.