In lieu of an actual daily blog post, I thought we could talk about the election that happened on June 5th.
RESULTS: Ollanta 51.5%, Keiko 48.5%
A bit of background:
Ollanta is a former military man leaning towards socialism. Ollanta is rumored to have close ties with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and is favored by those in the towns and country.
Keiko is the daughter of former 3 time president Alberto Fujimori. Educated in the US with a NJ husband Keiko is only 36 and was running on a platform of Security and Jobs for all. Keiko's bid for presidency was marred by her time as First Lady after her parents divorced as well as her father's connection to human rights violations and severe economic shock.
There is political debate on both sides, with some saying that Keiko was just running to free her father from jail, and others saying that Ollanta is bribing the peasants with food. With most Peruvians disliking both candidates the election was very tense. As voting is mandatory here, some Peruvians talked about just paying the S./ 80 fine and not voting for either disliked candidate.
While in Lima most people said that they were voting for Keiko while in Cuzco Ollanta is highly favored. The high tension election had some chance of getting violent, and we were all relieved that despite the close margin there was no widespread violence.
The thing that I noticed most about the election was the prevalence of electoral graffiti, from Ica to Lima, Lima to Cuzco and everywhere in between there was paint on every available surface proclaiming one candidate over the other.
This election was the runoff election after the 11 original candidates were narrowed down to two. With the middle-of-the-road candidates splitting the moderate vote it was easy to see how the 2 extremists Ollanta and Keiko came out on top.
Another interesting aspect of the election was the political history of the candidates. With Keiko as the daughter of a past president, Ollanta having run in the 2006 election, Toledo holding the presidency from '01-'06, and the current president Alan Garcia holding his second term, the pattern of the same elites rotating through the presidency is obvious.
RESULTS: Ollanta 51.5%, Keiko 48.5%
A bit of background:
Ollanta is a former military man leaning towards socialism. Ollanta is rumored to have close ties with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and is favored by those in the towns and country.
Keiko is the daughter of former 3 time president Alberto Fujimori. Educated in the US with a NJ husband Keiko is only 36 and was running on a platform of Security and Jobs for all. Keiko's bid for presidency was marred by her time as First Lady after her parents divorced as well as her father's connection to human rights violations and severe economic shock.
There is political debate on both sides, with some saying that Keiko was just running to free her father from jail, and others saying that Ollanta is bribing the peasants with food. With most Peruvians disliking both candidates the election was very tense. As voting is mandatory here, some Peruvians talked about just paying the S./ 80 fine and not voting for either disliked candidate.
While in Lima most people said that they were voting for Keiko while in Cuzco Ollanta is highly favored. The high tension election had some chance of getting violent, and we were all relieved that despite the close margin there was no widespread violence.
The thing that I noticed most about the election was the prevalence of electoral graffiti, from Ica to Lima, Lima to Cuzco and everywhere in between there was paint on every available surface proclaiming one candidate over the other.
This election was the runoff election after the 11 original candidates were narrowed down to two. With the middle-of-the-road candidates splitting the moderate vote it was easy to see how the 2 extremists Ollanta and Keiko came out on top.
Another interesting aspect of the election was the political history of the candidates. With Keiko as the daughter of a past president, Ollanta having run in the 2006 election, Toledo holding the presidency from '01-'06, and the current president Alan Garcia holding his second term, the pattern of the same elites rotating through the presidency is obvious.
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