Why the Left Lost the Presidential Elections in Peru

Why the Left Lost the Presidential Elections in Peru
Written by Immanuel Wallerstein Published: 19 April 2016

Peru is one of the countries with a two-round presidential election. Unless one candidate obtains 50%+ on the first round, there is a second round with only the two candidates who had the most votes in the first round. And, as has been increasingly the case worldwide, when there are three candidates with significant support, there is a ferocious battle for second place on the first round of elections.

In Peru on April 10, 2016, the leading candidate was Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the notorious former president Alberto Fujimori, presently imprisoned for human rights abuses. Definitive figures are not yet issued, but it seems she has about 40% of the votes. Second place was won by Pedro Pablo Kuczynski with probably 21%. Third place was occupied by Veronika Mendoza with about 19%.

What does this mean? A report by Reuters on the elections had a headline that summarized the views of most commentators: “Two pro-business candidates make Peru runoff.” The descriptive adjectives the media have been using about the three are “conservative” and “populist” for Fujimori, “center-right” for Kuczynski (who is a former World Bank economist), and “leftist” for Mendoza.

There seems virtually no difference between the two candidates in the runoff as far as priority to the so-called free market is concerned, and the stock market rewarded these commitments by an immediate jump after the first round. Their difference resides largely in Kuczynski’s more centrist views on social questions plus the fears that Fujimori arouses because of memories of her father’s authoritarian regime.

Turn the clock five years back to the previous election and the descriptive adjectives are quite different. The two candidates on the second round are again Fujimori (whose labels were the same) and Ollanta Humala who was said to be “left-leaning.” This label for him derives from the fact that, in still earlier times, he was endorsed by Hugo Chavez and seemed to many achavista.

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