Castillo plans a leftward course for Peru
The new president faces a coronavirus-ravaged economy and deeply entrenched political opposition, but his ambitious social programmes are a cause for celebration, writes KEN LIVINGSTONE
Peru's new President Pedro Castillo
PEDRO CASTILLO, a rural schoolteacher representing the left-wing party Peru Libre (Free Peru), scored a stunning victory in this year’s presidential election, but the struggle against powerful right-wing forces is now entering a new stage.
Castillo’s success was unexpected. Back in March he was at 5 per cent in the opinion polls but performed well in the candidates’ debates and secured 19 per cent in the first round of the election in April, topping 17 other candidates.
In the second round in June, he narrowly beat, by 50.13 per cent to 49.87 per cent, Keiko Fujimori of the right-wing Popular Force party. Fujimori is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, jailed in 2009 for 25 years for his role in death squad killings and kidnappings in the 1990s.
During the eight-week campaign before the final vote, Castillo faced a torrent of media criticism and repeated accusations that he wanted to turn Peru into a totalitarian state, with mass expropriations. But the impact of deep structural inequalities, exacerbated by a neoliberal economic agenda and the collapse of the health sector under a deadly pandemic, proved more decisive for the majority of voters.
This was the third defeat in a presidential contest for Fujimori, having also lost the 2011 and 2016 elections. She is facing trial over allegations that she took $1.2m in bribes from Brazilian construction company Odebrecht to fund these two presidential campaigns.
With stakes high and unwilling to concede defeat, she claimed electoral fraud, calling for 200,000 votes, virtually all from Castillo-supporting poor Andean areas, to be annulled.
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