Date: 2021-04-20
Time: 03:01:38 UTC
Title: Elections in Peru and Ecuador, a week later
It was merely a week ago when I sat preparing my thesis on my laptop and
distracted myself with election results arriving on my tablet from far
away in the Andean parts of South America. Indeed, Sunday, April 11 was
the day for general elections in Peru and Ecuador. Second round in
Ecuador but first round in Peru, making the night early in Ecuador and
late (even becoming morning) in Peru.
In Ecuador the results contradicted the polls, but at least by just a
few points. Young left-wing Correista Andres Arauz (UNES) ran against
conservative banker Guillermo Lasso (CREO), having defeated
center-leftists Yaku Perez (Pachutik) and Xavier Hervas (ID) in the
first round. Arauz struggled to make the ballot with President Lenin
Moreno trying hard to keep him as the heir to Rafael Correa out of
the election, along with any other Correistas. He finally made
it to the ballot registering with his running mate Carlos Rabascall for
the Citzen Revolution Movement (Movimiento Revolucion Ciudadana) which
formed the Union for the Hope (Union por la Esperanza - UNES) alliance
with the Democratic Center Movement.
Lasso had run in 2017 and lost to Lenin Moreno, but Moreno largely
adopted his neoliberal policies as a compromise because the election was
quite close (51.16% Moreno - 48.84% Lasso). Lasso was briefly
superminister of the economy in 1999 under the presidency of Jamil
Mahuad, making his upset victory in 2021 yet more surprising. In 1999,
under their tenure, Ecuador suffered an economic crisis, as Mahuad
dollarized the economy and froze bank accounts. This led to massive
riots, as the rich became richer and the poor became poorer. Worsening
a banking crisis that began in 1998, Mahuad was overthrown by a coup
d'etat in 2000 and replaced with his vice president, Gustavo Noboa.
With that history, it is surprising that Lasso in fact won the election
on April 11 by a final tally of 52.36%-47.64%. He won the populous
province of Pichincha (Quito) by a two-to-one margin. This result was
even more surprising considering Lasso represents continuation of the
neoliberal reforms initiated by Lenin Moreno, which failed miserably in
2019 with massive nationwide protests opposing the abolition of fuel
subsidies. Indeed, Moreno fell to an approval rating of 5% in mid-2021,
with the further consequences of poor response to the CoVID-19 epidemic.
While polls gave Arauz a narrow edge ahead of the election, his
combination of inexperience and association with the old Correa regime,
plus Lasso's co-option of center-left proposals (healthcare and
education spending) and endorsement by center-left candidate Xavier
Hervas, may explain his loss. Indeed even the traditionally left-wing
indigenous party Pachutik was far from supportive of the Correistas,
kicking out the indigenous coalition (CONAIE) leader Jaime Vargas for
endorsing Arauz. Pachutik vice presidential candidate Virna Cedeno even
endorsed Lasso, while Perez, Pachutik, and CONAIE supported a null vote
in the second round.
Peru, on the other hand, was quite a shock, to inside and outside
observers. Polls in March suggested than neither the two first-round
victors - Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori - would enter the
second-round, but rather the moderate, anti-corruption,
socially conservative center-left candidate of the centrist Popular
Action (Accion Popular) party, Puno/Lima congressman Yonhy Lescano,
along with centrist George Forsyth or right-wing economist Hernando de
Soto, amongst many others. The field indeed was crowded, with some
eighteen candidates participating, the highest since 2006, when Alan
Garcia was elected for his second term. The exit polls were utterly
surprising. At 7 pm local time, it was announced that far-leftist Pedro
Castillo of Free Peru (Peru Libre) came in first with 16.1% of the vote,
followed by Hernando de Soto and Keiko Fujimori with 11.9% of the vote,
Yonhy Lescano with 11.0% of the vote, and far-right ultraconservative
millionaire Rafael Lopez Aliaga with 10.5% of the vote. Ultimately
Castillo won with 19.098% of the vote, followed by Fujimori with 13.359%
of the vote. In the concurrent parliamentary elections, Peru Libre
gained the most seats in Congress (37), followed by 24 for Fujimori's
Popular Force (Fuerza Popular), 17 for Accion Popular, 13 for Aliaga's
Popular Renovation (Renovacion Popular), and 15 for Cesar Acuna's
Alliance for Progress (Alianza para el Progreso). Of important note, all
new congresspeople will be newcomers who only serve on term upon recent
electoral reforms made by Martin Vizcarra.
These results were indeed unprecedented. How did a left-wing
schoolteacher from one of the poorest regions of Peru (the mountainous
northern province of Cajamarca) rise to become a presidential hopeful?
Castillo was polling as little as 3% of the vote in late March polls.
Indeed, Pedro Castillo made his name as the leader of the SUTEP teachers
union fighting for higher wages in its 2017 strikes under the presidency of
the now-impeached Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. If time has become right for a
left wing outsider in Peru, it is now. Peru is seeing the worst of
the CoVID epidemic in Latin America, with over 50,000 dead and over
10,000 new cases per day, as of March 25th (Reuters). Castillo's
combination of social conservatism (opposition to same-sex marriage,
expanded abortion rights, and gender education in school) in a socially
conservative country and far-left economic policies (increased
investment in health and education, nationalization of strategic
industries) along with absence of corruption scandals made him popular
throughout the Peruvian highlands, beating center-left competitor
Lescano and noted socially progressive leftist Veronika Mendoza of
Cusco, who came in third in 2016, endorsing Kuczynski to keep Keiko
Fujimori out of the presidency. Castillo drew his support from the
impoverished provinces far from Lima, ranging from Cajamarca in the
north, to the Valle de los Rios Apurimac, Ene, y Mantaro (VRAEM; Valley
of the Rivers Apurimac, Ene, and Mantaro) in the center, and Cusco and
Puno to the south, near Bolivia. He even beat Mendoza in her hometown of
Cusco and Lescano in his hometown of Puno.
If recent polls (42 Castillo-31 Fujimori, Ipsos, April 15-16) hold true,
Castillo will become the first genuinely hardline left-wing president
of Peru since the dictatorship of Juan Velasco Alvarado, although
obviously without the overt authoritarianism. Unlike the ostensibly
leftist for the time Alan Garcia (1985-1990), Castillo lacks the
connections to the political establishment (Haya de la Torre, APRA) and
the apathy towards the interior that Garcia demonstrated. Time will tell
whether Castillo, if elected president, will fall to the corruption
scandals and/or human rights violations that every predecessor has since
Fernando Belaunde left the presidency in 1985.
We will anxiously await the final Peruvian election results of the
second round on June 6th. The election could have substantial
consequences for the country as a whole, either moving the country back
to right-wing/far-right Fujimorism like the long-lasting Uribism of
Colombia, or move it toward a decidedly opposite future, should Castillo
win on the backs of the country's impoverished,
CoVID-beleaguered interior Quechua population. The first
priority for both countries, however, is dealing with a worldwide
pandemic that has ravaged South America and exposed substantial
socioeconomic problems.
