Peruvians between rock and hard place before “least bad” runoff election
Lima - Either an extreme leftist or an authoritarian rightist, a Marxist teacher or a political heir accused of money laundering.
These are the two choices facing millions of Peruvian voters
on Monday morning after the preliminary results of the first presidential
election round were made public.
According to the latest report from the ONPE national
election office, with about 83 percent of the ballots counted, union leader
Pedro Castillo, with the ultra-leftist Peru Libre party, has obtained 18.3
percent of the votes, followed by former lawmaker Keiko Fujimori, with the
rightist Fuerza Popular and having pocketed 13.2 percent.
Together, these two extremist candidates – who are the two
top vote-getters in a crowded presidential field – have garnered a little over
31 percent of the votes so far, a showing that demonstrates the fragmentation
of an electorate that now finds itself “between a rock and a hard place” with
the dilemma of electing the “least bad” candidate in a runoff.
In Lima’s Los Olivos district, 24-year-old Claudia said that
the developing runoff scenario is “regrettable” and linked the election results
to the “disinformation” that she says has been focused on the more popular
candidates.
Claudia, who on Sunday voted for neither of those two
candidates, admitted to EFE that Fujimori mounted a “well-played strategy” and
put the country “between a rock and a hard place.”
“I wouldn’t want Keiko to win,” she admitted, adding after a
brief pause, that “if I had to choose between Keiko and Castillo, regrettably
(I’d vote for) Keiko. It would have to be that way, it’s not something that I’d
want.”
She said that the reason for that hypothetical decision is
clear: “If Castillo wins, I wouldn’t want to be like Cuba or Venezuela, a total
dictatorship, because he’s an extremist leftist.”
Another local resident, Jason Asanjo, expressed himself to
EFE along the same lines, saying that the daughter of former President Alberto
Fujimori, who governed from 1990-2000, would be “the least bad for the
country.”
“Between the extremist left and Keiko, who is a little on
the right, I feel that the least bad would be Keiko because of the fact that if
we go to the left we’ll have the result that the Venezuelans who are emigrating
to Lima have, since it would be an identical disaster-government like what’s
happening there,” he said.
Asanjo, 24, said that he’s leaning toward the Fuerza Popular
leader, in large part because of the alleged connections linking Castillo to
the Movement for Amnesty and Basic Rights (Movadef), the political arm of the
Shining Path terrorist group, although the candidate has denied that claim.
According to Asanjo, however, a government headed by Peru
Libre would return the country to “these things that our parents already
experienced during the 1990s,” during the armed internal conflict.
The dilemma disappears for people who have clear sympathies
for one of the two candidates, such as is the case with Mercedes Horna, a
middle-aged Lima resident and a faithful supporter of Fuerza Popular.
“I want Keiki Fujimori to win. She needs to be given a
chance. She’s not to blame for the problems her father has had,” Horna told
EFE.
On the other extreme are people like Dante Cabrera, who is
convinced that Castillo “is the solution for Peru” in finding a way out of the
corruption and the “complete looting by those in power” plaguing the country.
“I’d prefer for Castillo to win rather than Keiko Fujimori
because (she) is the legacy of her father and corruption is encysted in her,”
said Cabrera, who referred to prosecutors’ demand for 30 years behind bars in
the money laundering and criminal conspiracy trial launched against her in 2018
after irregular contributions to her prior election campaigns by companies like
Brazil’s construction giant Odebrecht.
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