Keiko Fujimori Wins Peru's Presidential Election

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio with news of the fact that after weeks of reviewing ballots, Peru's electoral commission has declared Keiko Fujimori the next president of the country. 

Transcript

Well, we’d trailed it, but it’s now official, Keiko Fujimori has won election to be Peru’s president, at the 4th attempt, ending a remarkable count in which she beat left-wing Roberto Sanchez by less than 50,000 votes out of a total of more than 18 million. No election in Peruvian history has been as tight, and although there is no doubt that Fujimori won, the polarisation of the country, added to the fact that significant sectors oppose her vehemently - considering her to be her father Alberto Fujimori’s daughter, and therefore a dangerous right-wing autocrat - and will likely try to stand in the way of everything she tries to do. 

The 7th June election was another troubled poll, after the chaos of the first round, and the fact that announcing the winner has taken 3 weeks has only added to the tension and the distrust which surrounds the vote. 

Fujimori has promised to restore “order and hope” and will take office for a five-year term on 28th July. Her victory signals another win for a remarkable surge in right wing victories across Latin America, although she is much more of a traditionalist right-winger than a Trump acolyte such as Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia. 

She has a tough path ahead, and whether she survives for long in the presidency is an open question given how Peru has had 9 different presidents in the last ten years, and many in fact blame Fujimori and her Fuerza Popular party for driving at least some of this instability. Whatever happens, many Peruvians are delighted at the return of a Fujimori to power, and just as many are appalled by the country’s inability to clean itself from the name, and everything which it implies, and reminds them of. For the right, it means order, security, liberal finances, and for the left it means abuses, state overreach, and militarization. It’s all a reminder of that old Karl Marx line, about history repeating itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.