Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Peru elections: Fujimori and Humala set for runoff vote

Presidential polls will go to second round, pitting a leftwing former army officer against a disgraced autocrat's daughter
Peru elections: Ollanta Humala, above, will challenge Keiko Fujimori in a runoff vote writer Mario Vargas Llosa has likened to a choice between Aids and terminal cancer. Photograph: Mariana Bazo/Reuters
A leftwing former army officer and the rightwing daughter of a disgraced autocrat will contest a runoff election in Peru, according to partial results from Sunday's presidential election.
Ollanta Humala, a one-time protege of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, won about 30% of the vote, more than any other candidate in a crowded field. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori, appeared to have come second with approximately 23%.
Supporters of each candidate celebrated on Monday and said Peru, a fast-growing economy riven by poverty and inequality, had made a bold break with established politics. Critics, however, despaired that three centrist candidates had split the "moderate" vote and gifted victory to two populists from opposing ends of the ideological spectrum.
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel prizewinning writer and former presidential candidate, said Humala was a Chávez-style demagogue and Fujimori would release torturers and corrupt cronies from her father's era. He compared the choice to "Aids and terminal cancer".
With about three-quarters of votes counted, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former minister and World Bank economist, was running third with 20.5%, just behind Fujimori. He all but conceded defeat. "It's almost certain the second round will be between Ollanta and Keiko," he said.
Alejandro Toledo, a former president, was fourth with about 16% and Luis Castañeda, a former mayor of the capital, Lima, trailed fifth with about 10%.
Pre-election polls suggested that in a second round Humala, who advocates greater state intervention to redistribute wealth, would struggle against Toledo or Castañeda but have an edge over Kuczynski and Fujimori.
The 48-year-old former lieutenant colonel also won the first round of the 2006 presidential election but lost to Alan Garcia in the run-off after strong attacks on his links with Chávez.
This time he swapped red t-shirts for sober suits, rebranded himself in the mould of Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and hired some of the former Brazilian president's consultants. His promise to share revenue from Peru's mining boom more evenly resonated with impoverished slum-dwellers and rural indigenous communities.
Fujimori, 35, a congresswoman and former first lady (so designated after her father divorced her mother), rode on the back of enduring gratitude for her father's success in taming inflation and guerrillas, and introducing populist economic policies, in the 1990s.
Critics fear the corruption and human rights abuses that landed her father in prison – he is serving a 25-year sentence – will return, along with pardons for him and his cronies. Fujimori has promised to respect democratic norms.
Fujimori and Humala have strong negative ratings of about 50%, suggesting each will try to move to the centre and paint the other as an extremist.
curtsy-guardian.co.uk

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