The Who's Who of Peru's Corruption-Plagued Presidential Race
The Who's Who of Peru's Corruption-Plagued Presidential Race
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Keiko Fujimori (C) is leading the presidential race, followed by Veronika Mendoza (L) and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (R)
in a dead heat for second. | Photo: Reuters
Published 8 April 2016
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Peruvians will head to the polls on April 10 to vote for their next president.
Accusations of corruption and compromised democracy if not outright electoral fraud have dominated the final weeks of Peru’s campaign leading up to the April 10 election. But just who are the candidates, and will the dirt coming out on various candidates overshadow their proposals?
Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Alberto Fujimori whose decade-long presidency morphed into a dictatorship in the early 1990s, has been the clear front-runner in Peru’s election since the early days of the campaign. The latest Ipsos poll shows her leading with 34 percent of the vote.
But beyond her core base of support, the neoliberal Popular Force candidate has struggled to calm fears that she would follow in the footsteps of the authoritarian and rights-abusing regime of her father, now serving a 25-year sentence for human rights crimes and corruption. She recently vowed to not repeated the “errors” of her father’s regime, including a self-coup to propel him in power beyond his term limit. She is deeply linked to her father’s regime, having served as her father’s first lady from 1994 to 2000.
Fujimori has faced fierce demands to see her booted from the presidential race over accusations, based on video proof, of illegal “gift giving" during her campaign. Electoral authorities ultimately ruled to keep her on the ballot despite widespread cries of bias after former candidate Cesar Acuña was kicked out for similar charges.
The presidential favorite has also received dirty campaign money, implicated in the Panama Papers, through key financial backers who hid and laundered funds with the help of Mossack Fonseca in offshore tax havens and shell companies.
[font size=2]Veronika Mendoza [/font]
Veronika Mendoza, a member of Congress and psychologist by trade, has surged in the polls in recent weeks, catapulting her into a dead heat with Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for runner-up to secure a spot on the runoff ballot. Mendoza is polling at 15.5 percent in the latest Ipsos poll, neck-in-neck with Kuczynski, after barely registering in the polls in the early days of the campaign.
In stark contrast to Fujimori’s bid for Peru’s top office, the left-wing Mendoza, a candidate with the Broad Front coalition, has vowed to rewrite the country’s 1993 Fujimori-era constitution. She has also promised to strengthen labor rights, tackle gender inequality, tighten oversight on mining operations, and increase cultural funding to promote Indigenous and other cultural expression.
Mendoza’s proposals have made her a target of relentless attacks accusing her of being “anti-mining” and a “terrorist,” while opponents fear her left-wing platform will follow in the footsteps of Latin America’s socialist pink tide led by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Though a champion of many progressive policies, Mendoza’s platform proposes a larger role for private investment than seen in Venezuela’s socialist Bolivarian Revolution.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/The-Whos-Who-of-Perus-Corruption-Plagued-Presidential-Race--20160407-0023.html
