LIMA, Peru – Vicenta Escobar (62) sells fruit from a street stall in the capital of Peru, Lima. In every presidential election over the past four decades, she has chosen a candidate she believes in, hoping he or she will deliver change.
Not this time. This Sunday, she plans to arrive at her polling station to vote – as required by Peruvian law. But she will cast her vote without making a single point.
“I’m going to leave it empty,” she said Thursday afternoon. She was fed up, according to her, with ‘all the lies and robberies’.
Peruvians vote on Sunday for a moment, and many people cite one of the lowest points in the country’s young democracy. Eighteen candidates are taking part in the vote, but according to recent polls, about 15 percent of voters are expected to cast a blank ballot, and no candidate has been able to get more than ten percent support. The top two candidates will run after a run-off if no one gets more than half the votes.
The election follows a turbulent period of five years in which the country has been ridden by four presidents and two congresses, and it comes amid growing frustration over corruption, the pandemic and a political system that many say interests the corporations and officials – but not from ordinary people.
Whoever is sworn in later this year is likely to have the weakest mandate of any elected president in recent history, and will be forced to deal with dual economic and health crises next year.
Peru has one of the highest death rates in the world, and daily deaths have climbed new highlights this month, the Brazilian variant of the virus spread across the country. Many Covid patients died due to lack of access to oxygen or ventilators, working-class families struggled to get enough food, and the closure of the school forced children into the workforce.
The economy shrank by 12 percent last year in the country’s worst recession in three decades – the second worst slump in Latin America, after that of Venezuela.
Voters polled in Lima, the capital, this month have apparently agreed on their shared frustration with the system.
“We used to trust our leaders somewhat. But now no one believes any of them, “said Teresa Vásquez., 49, a housekeeper.
Me. Vásquez supported one of the recent presidents, Martin Vizcarra, even as lawmakers charged him amid corruption allegations.
Then she learns that he was secretly vaccinated last year with extra doses from a clinical trial in Peru that researchers distributed among political elites.
This year, she limited her options to two candidates who looked clean. But with less than a week before the election, he was still struggling to decide.
“It’s the same with my whole family,” she said. “No one knows who to trust.”
Opinion polls released ahead of Sunday’s poll showed that any two out of half a dozen candidates could move to a likely June run-off.
Among the candidates who received about 10 percent of the vote in recent polls are Pedro Castillo, a social-conservative union activist who rose last week on promises to invest heavily in health care and education, and Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing opposition leader and daughter of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, who said she would end Covid’s closure and fight crime with an ‘iron fist’.
This year’s election coincides with the 200th anniversary of Peru’s independence. But instead of celebrating, many Peruvians question the validity of their democracy and their free-economic economic model.
Even before the pandemic plunged the country into disarray, support for democracy in Peru slipped to one of the lowest levels in the region, according to a 2018-2019 survey by the Latin American Public Opinion Project, with the army being considered the most reliable. institution.
Since the last general election yielded a divided government five years ago, Peru has continually found clashes between the legislature and the executive, as opposition lawmakers wanted to overtake two presidents and Mr. Vizcarra dissolved Congress and called for new legislative elections to carry out reforms.
Three former presidents spent time in jail during bribery investigations, including one candidate in this year’s election; a fourth killed himself to arrest; and a fifth, mr. Vizcarra, one of the most popular recent leaders, was charged in November.
His replacement, who lasted less than a week in office, is being investigated in connection with the fatal shooting of two young men during protests, which led to his resignation.
One reason for the country’s endemic corruption is that political parties exchange their loyalty to presidential candidates in barter deals, and that they are often imprisoned for special interests.
“Political parties are no longer a vehicle for the representation of the citizens,” said Adriana Urrutia, a political scientist who leads the pro-democracy organization Transparencia.
“There are parties in the current parliament that represent the interests of private universities that are fined because they do not meet the minimum requirements,” she added. “There are parties that represent the interests of illegal economies, such as illegal logging and illegal mining.”
Some candidates are paying attention to their messages to address the growing skepticism about democracy.
Mr. Castillo, the trade union activist, has promised to replace the Constitutional Tribunal with a court elected under “popular mandate” and said it would dissolve Congress if it blocked a proposal to replace the Constitution. Rafael López Aliaga, a businessman and a member of the ultra-conservative Catholic group Opus Dei, said Peru needed to stop a left-wing ‘dictatorship’ from consolidating power and promised to imprison corrupt officials for life.
Me. Fujimori abandoned efforts to moderate her platform in her third presidential grant. She promised to forgive her father, who is serving a sentence for violating human rights and graft.
The constant political unrest has worried analysts about the future of the country.
“I think the scenario that is coming up is frightening,” said Patricia Zárate., the principal investigator for the Institute of Peruvian Studies, a ballot box organization. “Congress knows they can easily accuse the president, and it’s easy for the president to close Congress. Now it will be easier to do again. This is disturbing. ”
Reporting was contributed byJulie Turkewitz in Bogotá.