Election Results

Peru had their first round of presidential elections on April 10, less commonly known and Benmas Eve. The top two candidates have been officially selected and will face off for the top job on June 5th. Here's a look at the two candidates.

Keiko
Keiko Fujimori (pronounced Foo-He-More-E) is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori. He's the man who defeated Mario Vargas Llosa in the 1990 election. His two biggest achievements are defeating the Maoist terrorist group The Shining Path, which had been terrorizing Peru since 1980, and restoring stability to the economy. The latter was achievement by the implementation of harsh economic policies known as "Fujishock." 

His most infamous achievement is the autogolpe (one of my favorite Spanish words which literally means "self-coup") of 1992. Congress was ruled by an opposing party, making it difficult for Fujimori to implement his platform. The approval rating of the legislative branch of the government was sitting low at 17%.* So on April 5 Fujimori used the military to shut down congress and suspend the constitution. Apparently the coup was popular enough that Fujimori called it ""not a negation of real democracy, but on the contrary… a search for an authentic transformation to assure a legitimate and effective democracy."

In July of 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison (which is the standard maximum sentence in Peru). For more on Alberto Fujimori, check out his wikipedia page. 

It's imporant to talk about Alberto Fujimori's presidency when looking at Keiko's candidacy because she was not a simple bystander to all this. After he parents divorced, she served as the youngest first lady in the history of the Americas from 19940 to 2000, a period of time that included this...

"From 1996 to 2000, the Fujimori government oversaw a massive family planning campaign known as Voluntary Surgical Contraception. The United Nations and other international aid agencies supported this campaign.^[75] The Nippon Foundation, headed by Ayako Sono, a Japanese novelist and personal friend of Fujimori, supported as well.^[76][77] Nearly 300,000, mostly indigenous, women were coercively or forcefully sterilized during these years.^[4]"   

...as well as other human rights abuses by the Fujimori government. Keiko has been noncomittal about whether or not she would pardon her father. Keiko's funding has been a hot question, and the Panama Papers revealed that she is funded by dirty money. 

On April 5th (anniversary of Alberto's self-coup), there were massive anti-Keiko demonstrations in major cities all across the country. Just as Trump is seen by many to be dangerous in the States, Keiko is considered dangerous in Peru. She was the leading candidate in the April 10th election, and it will be interesting to see if anti-Fujimori sentiment will be enough to defeat her.

PPK (Pedro Pablo Kuczynski)
PPK came in second on April 10th. He was a businessman in the US (he had dual citizenship until he renounced it very recently as part of his presidential bid) before moving into Peruvian politics. He résumé includes work at the IMF and in the administrations of 2 different Peruvian presidents. His punny party, Peruanos Por el Kambio (Peruvians for Change), was created in anticipation of these elections.** 

I know a lot less about PPK. He was seen as having the best chance of beating Keiko, and is popular among left leaning voters. Most of my friends from Lima are rooting for him, and have been for some time. If I learn more about him over the next two months, I'll let you know.

*For comparison, according to Gallup, the US Congress approval rating right now is 13%. 
**This is normal in Peruvian politics. Parties are built around candidates. Many parties only last one or two election cycles. The institutional concept of political parties that we have in the US doesn't really apply here.