One month from today, June 5th, will be a very interesting day.
In early April, Peru held elections for its president, congress, and representatives to the Andean Parliament. There were campaign signs and posters everywhere.
There really aren't political parties in Peru the way there are in the U.S. There, we have well-established parties who put forth candidates. Here, it's more like a candidate decides they want to run and then they form a party of supporters around themselves. For example, in the orange sign above, the parliamentary candidates are aligning themselves with presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori- I think the party's name is Fuerza 2011- and you can see the party's symbol is an orange circle with a big K in it, for Keiko. The symbol for Toledo's Perú Posible party was a big T. I think there were 11 or 14 or some such number of presidential candidates on the ballot.
It seemed to me that there were 5 major presidential candidates- Alejandro Toledo, Keiko Fujimori, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), Luis Castañeda, and Ollanta Humala. I feel like I personally saw a lot of support for PPK, who indeed won Lima in the elections. Overall, though, it turned out Ollanta Humala first, then Keiko Fujimori, PPK, Toledo... I was a little surprised it was Keiko in second instead of PPK or Toledo, just from what I'd seen.
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| I don't know the story behind this, but somehow PPK became PPKuy (cuy = guinea pig), and some of his supporters would go around in guinea pig mascot suits. I particularly enjoyed this, especially when I'd see them dancing near busy intersections. I think U.S. candidates should have mascots. :-) |
We're all about the right to vote in the US- but we also have the right not to vote, I suppose you could say. Voting is obligatory in Peru. I was impressed by the television and radio commercials I heard explaining exactly how to fill out the ballots. The way the Peruvian governmental system works is that each president serves a 5-year term and can be re-elected, though not for a consecutive term. Also, the candidate has to win a straight-up majority- 50% plus one vote. If no one gets that majority in the first vote- which I think would be rare- there's a second, run-off vote between the two top presidential candidates.
So right now, there will be a second round of voting on June 5th between Ollanta and Keiko. Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of a former Peruvian president (Alberto Fujimori, 1990-2000. Note they're only supposed to be in office for 5 years at a time... he was a dictator who's currently in jail for things like human rights violations. But he's kind of controversial because he also helped the economy start to improve and stomped out the Shining Path terrorist group.) Keiko would likely continue things in the way they've been going, as the past few presidents (at least 25 years I think) have been right-wing. Ollanta is left-wing, and is more socialist and nationalist. He's been compared to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, though that's become a controversial topic too. Peru is still a third-world country, and a large percentage of the population lives below the poverty line. So Ollanta has a lot of appeal. He lost in the second round of voting in 2006 to current president Alan Garcia. I personally think he'll be the winner... People are looking for a change, though whether or not it'll be a change for the better overall is hard to say yet.
People who didn't vote for either of these two top candidates in the first round may now have a difficult choice to make. Mario Vargas Llosa, a Peruvian author who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, put this choice between Ollanta and Keiko as "choosing between AIDS and cancer". Some people don't like Ollanta but will by no means vote for Keiko, and vice versa. In these cases it's more voting against someone than voting for someone. The third option, if you really don't like either candidate, is purposely mis-marking your ballot and having it discounted- because you have to go vote or get fined.
It's been really interesting to be here in Peru during their elections. This is a pretty big deal, I think. It's a bit surprising how much we (me and the other students in my program) care about their elections- we live here now, and we want to see this country continue to move forward along a good path, whatever that may be exactly. So we'll see what happens June 5th, especially when the preliminary results start to come in. The new president will take office after I leave- July 28, Peru's Independence Day (from Spain). Apparently half the country will be celebrating, the other half crying. You'll hear more from me on this topic around June 5th.
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