I am unwilling to believe that my compatriots will be so foolish as to put us in the position of choosing between AIDS and terminal cancer, which is what [the choice between] Humala and Fujimori would be.
That is, unfortunately, exactly what happened.
First, a bit of background. Peru represents one of South America's clearest success stories over the past decade, with rapid economic growth and modernization and an avoidance of the sort of populist quasi-dictatorship that has ensnared Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and to a certain extent Argentina. Its two greatest hurdles over the next decade will be extending that prosperity to the poorer interior and avoiding the sort of drug violence that some of its neighbors have at various points succumbed to, all without falling victim to the same spiral of autocracy.
The major candidates for yesterday's election were:
Ollanta Humala, with 32% of the vote
Keiko Fujimori, with 23%
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, with 19%
Alejandro Toledo, with 15%, and
Luis Castañeda Lossio, with 10%
Three of them could be described as mainstream. Unfortunately, they are the last three, knocked out of contention for the June run-off between Humala and Fujimori: PPK, who is an Oxford/Princeton educated economist and former Peruvian Prime Minister with American citizenship; Toledo, who is a Stanford-educated economist and former President; and Castañeda, the ex-mayor of Lima.
Humala is exactly the kind of populist Peru does not need right now. He was endorsed by both Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela in the last election (in which he lost in a runoff to Alan García, who is forbidden by the sort of rule common in dictator-weary Latin America--but always simply ignored or repealed by the dictator--from serving consecutive terms). He ran on the tickets of the Nationalist, Socialist, Communist, and Revolutionary Socialist parties.
Some of you may have recognized the name Fujimori. Keiko is the daughter of jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who led a repressive (but economically successful! that's good enough, right?) regime from 1990-2000. He was put on trial in 2009 after a chase that saw him flee to Japan, be arrested at a Chilean airport, and attempt to run for Japan's parliament while under house arrest in Chile in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid extradition. He was eventually convicted of multiple human rights abuses, particularly related to a paramilitary death squad he operated while cracking down on Shining Path and Túpac Amaru guerrillas.
Keiko is running on Alberto Fujimori's record and has vowed to pardon her father if elected (though she may be currently wavering on this promise).
There are your (well, Peru's) choices.
Good luck.
