Thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday (22) in several cities in Peru to reject the presidential candidacy of Keiko Fujimori, 45, during marches called by groups for the defense of human rights and the fight against corruption. There are 15 days left before the vote when she will face the unionist Pedro Castillo, 51 years old.
Under the slogan “For Peru, Keiko will not go”, the march took place peacefully in Lima with thousands of people wearing masks and waving banners with slogans against the candidate and her father, the ex- dictator Alberto Fujimori, who was in power from 1990 to 2000.
The demonstration began in the afternoon in Plaza San Martín, the epicenter of the country’s actions, and passed through the historic city center even before the curfew, in effect from 9 p.m. due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Relatives of victims of human rights violations under the government of Alberto Fujimori were in the forefront. Also in attendance were hundreds of young people who see Fujimorism as part of a corrupt political class that has set the country on fire for the past three decades.
“Fujimori never again! This is why I have come to walk, for dignity, for my future, for the future of my children, for the future of other generations, why I come to walk, because I am outraged by so much corruption, for so many decades of being robbed and looted, ”said one protester who identified himself as Roberto.
Keiko, who is running for president for the third time, heads the Força Popular, a Fujimorista party that helped topple ex-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski today, a movement that sparked the political crisis in the country: the current head of the country, interim Francisco Sagasti, is the fourth in the current term.
PPK, as Kuczynski is called, resigned in 2016. His successor, Martín Vizcarra, was removed from his post in November 2020 after facing two impeachment cases, also for receiving bribes. wine, which would place it in the category of “moral incapacity”, preventing continuity in the position. Subsequently, Congressman Manuel Merino de Lama took over for just six days, who resigned after episodes of violence following the institutional crisis.
In the first round, Keiko got 13.4% of the vote, behind Castillo, with 18.9%. For the second round, scheduled for June 6, he takes the upper hand, according to the latest polls.
A survey published on Sunday (23) indicates that 44.8% of respondents intend to vote for Castillo; in Keiko, 34%. The poll was carried out by the Peruvian Institute of Studies at the request of the newspaper La Republica among 1,208 people on May 20 and 21 and had a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points. The poll also indicated that 13% intended to vote blank or overturn their vote on June 6.
Castillo, who had started lowering the polls earlier this month, has gained ground since the same IEP poll in mid-May, in which he got 36.5% of the vote, and Keiko, 29.6% .
Fujimori’s daughter has a BA in Business Administration from Boston University and is married to an American, with whom she has two daughters. In 2018, Keiko was arrested on charges of money laundering and receiving two money from Brazilian entrepreneur Odebrecht. The following year, he obtained a habeas corpus, but the process is not yet complete.
Unlike the 2011 and 2016 elections, in which he reached the second round but ended up being defeated, this time Keiko made no gestures of reconciliation or apologies for the human rights violations committed by the father to alleviate the rejection of his name.
On two occasions, she stressed that she did not agree with the excesses of the Fujimori period in power and said that she would not forgive people prosecuted or imprisoned for them – like her own father.
Castillo is a surprise to many. When reporting the first results of the first round, CNN in Spanish did not even have a photo of him to display. The candidate showed himself to the world in a picturesque way, going to vote on horseback, in Cajamarca, in the Andean region.
Unionist and high school teacher, he became known nationally by leading teachers’ strikes, the most famous of them in 2017. Candidate of the Perú Libre alliance, he defends higher salaries among employees of the education sector. He has an anti-corruption rhetoric and proposes to dissolve the Constitutional Court and the 1993 Constitution – according to him officials to allow irregular practices.