This Sunday, Peruvians went to the polls to choose between a record number of 35 candidates for the presidency and, as expected, trends indicate that none of them reached the 50% of the votes necessary to win in the first round.
With Fifty three% of the votes counted, the right-wing Keiko Fujimori leads with 16% of the total, closely followed by the ultra-conservative Rafael López Aliaga, with 14%. In third place is the centrist Jorge Nieto, with 12%.
However, the percentage difference between candidates is so small and the vote is so fragmented that anything can still happen.
Amid rising crime and a political crisis that has eroded trust in institutions, election day was not without problems.
The polls opened at 7 a.m. local time with delays in some areas, including the capital, where more than 63,000 people were left without voting, reported this Sunday Piero Corvetto, head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).
According to Corvetto, the distribution of the electoral subject matter failed, but throughout the day the local media also reported delays in the installation of voting tables and absences of citizens in charge of receiving the votes.
To solve the problem, ONPE established that citizens affected by the lack of electoral subject matter will be able to vote this Monday.
Some 27 million people were eligible to vote both in Peru and abroad.
In addition to the president and vice president, deputies and senators were also elected this Sunday.
In fact, whoever is elected will surely face a divided Congress, which could not only hinder the implementation of his political agenda, but also his own survival in office.
The winner of the runoff will be the ninth president of Peru in 10 years.
The right against the right
If the trend of the first results is confirmed, the second round will be between two right-wing candidates.
The Fuerza Favorite candidate is 50 years old and is the heir of the controversial president Alberto Fujimori, whom she vindicates. Their electoral motto, for example, is “order returns.”
This would be the fourth consecutive election in which Keiko Fujimori reaches the runoff. In the previous three it was defeated by politicians who did not finish their terms.
López Aliaga, Renovación Favorite candidate, left the mayor’s office of Lima to launch his second attempt at the presidency. The previous time it did not reach the runoff stage.
The 65-year-old millionaire belongs to Opus Dei and has practiced celibacy since he was 19 years old.
Both candidates promised a tough line against crime and corruption, two of the issues that most concern Peruvians.
To this end, both López Aliaga and Fujimori proposed the construction of maximum security megaprisons and removing Peru from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Their proposals are similar although they later differ in the ways of carrying them out.
It remains to be seen what the supporters of the rest of the candidates, who account for more than 60% of the votes, will do in this eventual second round of right versus right.
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