Peru votes in tight presidential poll

Millions of Peruvians turn out to vote in election which sees populists from the far right and left battling it out Peru voted in a cliffhanger presidential election on Sunday which pitted two populists from the far right and left against each other, testing the country’s young democracy and thriving economy to the test. Final opinion polls gave Ollanta Humala, a former army officer who once staged a coup, a slim lead over Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who was jailed for corruption and human rights abuses. “Let’s not fall into confrontation. Let’s treat today as a party,” said Humala after a mud-slinging campaign in which both sides accused the other of being dangers to democracy. Fujimori struck an equally conciliatory note. “I trust God will know how to guide our country.” Analysts warned, however, that the loser was likely to demand a recount and claim fraud in a poll which drew millions of Peruvians from Andean highlands, Amazon forests and Pacific coast cities. Polls last week gave Humala, 48, a razor-thin lead within statistical margins of error but an Ipsos poll on Saturday gave him a slightly wider lead of 3.8%. The former lieutenant colonel modelled himself on Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s socialist president, in a previous run for the presidency but this time he swapped red T-shirts for suits and tacked to the centre to try to soothe concerns he would derail breakneck economic growth. “We are proposing democracy, not dictatorship … with development, social and economic inclusion, as well as economic growth,” he said in a final campaign rally. Fujimori, 36, is the daughter of Alberto, a president who crushed leftist guerrillas and tamed inflation in the 1990s but who ended up disgraced and in jail over corruption and death squad killings. The young senator dropped a pledge to pardon her father and said she would respect judicial independence and other institutions guaranteeing Peru’s democracy. “It is fundamental for us to maintain clear rules for investors,” she said. “[Humala] is a good soldier of Hugo Chávez.” She cast herself as a hardworking mother and won support from the urban poor and big business elites, including media groups which turned into cheerleaders for his campaign. Humala tapped the rural poor’s resentment at feeling bypassed by a commodities-led economic boom. A group of intellectuals backed him as the lesser evil, including the Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, who compared the candidates as a choice between Aids and cancer. Peru Rory Carroll guardian.co.uk

Posted by on June 5, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.