In the latest round of the most polarized consultations in the country’s recent history, the face to face was staged between Pedro Castillo, a former teacher and candidate of the socialist party Peru Libre and Keiko Fujimori, exponent of the conservative party Fuerza Popular and daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, now in prison.
Polls immediately predicted a head to head between the two candidates, after Castillo unexpectedly won the first round of elections in April. Castillo rose to prominence in 2017 thanks to the national teachers’ strike he led as a union leader. The school has remained one of the candidate’s priorities in this election campaign, along with the fight against inequalities, which aims to fight with the renegotiation of taxation on large mining companies. His detractors accuse him of wanting to radically reform the country’s economic structure and brand him a “communist”.
If Castillo on the one hand is a relatively new face in Peruvian politics, his challenger is instead a “daughter of” and runs for the third time to the presidency. Alberto Fujimori, Keiko’s father, was president of Peru in the 1990s and is now serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption. Fujimori’s father remains a divisive figure in Peru and his daughter promises that if elected she will grant him pardon. Keiko Fujimori intends to pursue the policies of strengthening the capitalist and free market model undertaken by his father two decades ago. To do this, it aims to establish a “demodura”, a crasis of “democracy” and a “hard hand”, intensifying the fight against crime and corruption. Fujimori also promises economic aid to families who have lost a relative due to Covid-19.
Peru was in fact hit hard by the pandemic: the South American country ranks first in the world for the number of deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants, with 180 thousand victims out of a total of about 33 million inhabitants.