Son of Jewish refugees said to lead in Peru election exit polls
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, 77, a former World Bank economist, edging out Keiko Fujimori, though by less than margin of error
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s presidential election was in a dead heat late Sunday with a Jewish former World Bank economist apparently leading the daughter of imprisoned ex-President Alberto Fujimori in a vote seen as a referendum on the disgraced strongman’s legacy.
But with the results of two quick counts of the ballots showing that Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s narrow lead over Keiko Fujimori was within their statistical margin for error it was too close to call the election.
Kuczynski’s father was a renowned pathologist and one of Peru’s leading public health administrators, pioneering the treatment of leprosy in Peru. He served in the German army during World War I, fleeing Berlin in 1933 because his family was Jewish.
Kuczynski, or PPK as he is widely known, was born in Peru but was educated abroad, beginning his career at the World Bank as an economist before coming back to serve as deputy manager of the Peruvian Central Bank. His technocrat’s career was cut short in 1968, when he lost his job during a military coup. He spent much of the next three decades in the United States working first at the World Bank and then for First Boston International, later acquired by Credit Suisse, and on the boards of several companies and private equity firms.
He returned to Peru following Fujimori’s resignation in 2000 and went on to serve twice as finance minister as well as Cabinet chief under former President Alejandro Toledo.
Kuczynski addressed throngs of cheering supporters waving red-and-white Peruvian flags from the balcony of his campaign headquarters Sunday, urging them to be vigilant against fraud at the ballot box and await official results but otherwise sounding as if he had already been declared the winner.
“We’re going to have a government built on consensus. No more low blows or fights,” said Kuczynski, who supported fellow conservative Fujimori in the 2011 runoff won by President Ollanta Humala.
Meanwhile, supporters of Fujimori put on a brave face, allowing themselves to be entertained by a band while awaiting official results expected later Sunday.
In its quick count, pollster Ipsos-Apoyo said Kuczynski got 50.5 percent of the votes, compared with 49.5 percent for Fujimori. GfK showed Kuczynski winning by 1.6 points. Both counts had a plus-or-minus 1 percentage point margin for error.
A potential swing vote in a close race could be the 885,000 Peruvians eligible to vote abroad — about 3.8 percent of the electorate. Ipsos’s quick count results account for the foreign vote.
Keiko Fujimori had won the first round of voting by a 20-percentage point margin but her wide lead over Kuczynski melted away in the days before Sunday’s runoff vote.
It would be a stunning turnaround for the ex-World Bank economist, who managed to narrow the lead by abandoning his above-the-fray, grandfatherly appeal and hitting Fujimori hard.
“Peru is on the threshold of becoming a narco-state,” the 77-year-old candidate, who would be Peru’s oldest president, told supporters at his closing campaign rally in Lima.
The reference wasn’t just to Alberto Fujimori’s well-known ties to corruption, organized crime and death squads, for which he’s serving a 25-year jail sentence, but an attempt to draw attention to a string of scandals that have hobbled Fujimori in the final stretch. The most notable scandal was a report that one of her big fundraisers and the secretary general of her party was the target of a US Drug Enforcement Administration investigation. Peru is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
Her running mate, Jose Chlimper, a Cabinet member at the end of Alberto Fujimori’s government, is also in hot water for orchestrating the broadcast of a doctored audio tape in an attempt to clear the name of the party boss.
“If Fujimori wins the big question is whether she’ll be able to control her party,” Eduardo Dargent, a political scientist at Lima’s Catholic University, said prior to the voting.
PPK, as Kuczynski is almost universally known in Peru, is also benefiting from a last-minute endorsement by the third-place finisher in the first round of voting, leftist congresswoman Veronika Mendoza, the protagonist of a massive anti-Fujimori demonstration this week the likes of which Peru hasn’t seen since the turbulent end of Fujimori’s rule 16 years ago.
Fujimori, who served as first lady in her father’s administration after her parents’ divorce, has tried to contain her rival’s rise by taking distance from her father’s crimes, even signing a pledge not to pardon him if elected.
“I’m the candidate, not my father,” she has frequently repeated.
At the same time, she’s vowed to bring back the “iron hand” style of government for which many still revere the elder Fujimori, who is credited with taming Maoist Shining Path rebels as well as the country’s hyperinflation. Instead of rebels, Keiko Fujimori is promising to wield an iron fist against crime, a top voter concern. Among her proposals: build jails in high-altitude prisons in the Andes to punish and isolate dangerous criminals.
She’s also trying to cast her rival, the son of a Jewish-Polish immigrant who is married to an American and spent decades in business outside Peru, as part of the white elite establishment that has traditionally overlooked the needs of the poor.
Regardless of who wins, Keiko Fujimori has already reshaped Peru’s political landscape.
In April, her Popular Force party won 73 of 130 seats in the unicameral congress, setting Fujimori up to be the first president since her father in the 1990s to govern with a legislative majority. Her detractors say that’s a risk to Peru’s already-weak system of checks and balances.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
