Peru’s Election Is About to Make Its Problems Worse
One thing is clear ahead of Peru’s national elections this weekend: It’s likely to leave the country less functional than before. Peruvians are disgusted with the system and won’t back any presidential candidate in sizable numbers. Whomever is the winner, Peru’s new president is going to face an impossible task of governing effectively without a majority in Congress. And he or she will do so amid a raging pandemic that has slipped out of the government’s control and has laid bare the inequality underpinning the country’s more than two decades of spectacular economic growth.
The election follows a litany of corruption scandals. Peru’s
last regularly elected president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was forced to resign
and is awaiting trial on corruption and money laundering charges. His
replacement, Martín Vizcarra, was impeached by a cynical and self-serving
Congress and then caught up in a vaccine scandal. Congress briefly elevated
Vizcarra’s parliamentary antagonist, Manuel Merino, to the presidency. But
Merino was run out of office by massive street demonstrations. His replacement,
current President Francisco Sagasti, was chosen as a respected centrist to
steer the country to new elections.
Executive corruption in Peru is only rivaled by Congress:
More than half of its members, spread widely across the parties, face
investigations for corruption. Voters will be glad to throw incumbents out of
office in elections that run concurrently with the presidential election. But
it is far from clear that a new body will be cleaner or more effective than the
current one. Many politicians win votes by doling out favors to voters and
cultivating business ties that leave them indebted to special interests.
Polling for the presidential election remains highly
uncertain. There are 18 candidates that range from the extreme left to far
right and cover everything in between. Yonhy Lescano, a candidate for Acción
Popular who represents the left faction of the big tent, center-right party,
has a bare lead over the pack. But even he is unlikely to garner much more than
15 percent of the vote, failing to clear the 50 percent threshold for an
outright win and thus forcing a second-round election. The plurality of voters
either don’t know who they will support or will cast blank or spoiled ballots
as a show of disgust with the system.
The lack of political consensus in Peru, or even a clear
axis of competition, is a sign of the country’s multiplying crises. The
COVID-19 pandemic has run rampant in the country. It is now averaging more than
8,000 new infections per day and more than 200 deaths. Since the pandemic’s
onset, Peru’s infection rate is on par with other hard-hit countries in the
region like Brazil and Chile. And its per capita death rate is similar to that
of the United States.
This has exposed a threadbare health care system. Far too
many Peruvians have difficulty accessing care. Medical personnel are scarce in
rural regions, and the pandemic got off to a quick start in the country due to
a shortage of medical supplies and protective equipment.
The fact that the economy is reliant on labor from the
informal sector complicates these problems. Informal sector workers often live
in densely packed informal housing. Many of them lack access to clean water and
sewage systems. While the poor suffer the brunt of the virus and economic pain,
politicians and their well-connected family and friends secretly got access to
the country’s first vaccine doses in a scandal that was dubbed “vaccine-gate.”
Equally important is the fact that Peru’s party system is
highly fractured and unstable. Parties often form around outsized personalities
like that of Keiko Fujimori, a former dictator’s daughter who is running for
the presidency through the Fuerza Popular party. Political ideologies take a
back seat to these personalities. There are not clear and consistent
ideological axes of political competition. Issues like the state’s role in
government and the importance of social values, while important and debated,
are not decisive. The result is small parties often position themselves as
kingmakers in Congress in exchange for getting their way on powerful
appointments or pet issues.
Presidents struggle to govern under these circumstances.
Kuczynski’s resignation in 2018 came on the back of leaked videos showing the
president’s allies trying to buy support from congressional opposition members.
If there is one predictable consequence of this impending
executive-congressional stalemate, it is this: more political instability. The
new executive’s inability to get things done through political compromise will
provide strong temptations to engage in shady deal-making. Corruption scandals
will mount as a result.
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