In Peru, Pedro Castillo Leads by Razor-Thin Margin

The race between two such polar opposite candidates—neither of whom had been expected to make the runoff in the first place—in a year when many Peruvians already felt battered by the political upheaval of the past five years plus the COVID-19 pandemic left many voters facing an almost existential choice between the lesser of two evils in what was supposed to be a celebratory bicentennial election.

A favorite among rural and antiestablishment voters, Castillo presented himself as a vote against the Lima-centered political and business establishment with a promise to alter the country’s current course of action through broad economic and constitutional reforms. With markets already jittery about the possibility of a Castillo win, the Peruvian sol dropped 2.5 percent against the U.S. dollar on June 7—its biggest single-day decrease in a decade.

Fujimori, on the other hand, focused on a pro-status quo and security-centered platform. She also worked to cast her rival as a Hugo Chávez-style communist, a message that gained traction in Peru, which has received 1.2 million Venezuelan refugees in recent years, more than any other country besides Colombia. With a penchant toward the authoritarian style of her father, she ran on creating a demodura, or a “hard democracy,” modeled on a strong security state and “restoring respect” for law enforcement. Though she was able to improve her anti-vote numbers during the course of the campaign, the anti-fujimorismo movement remained vocal and highly visible.

Castillo’s campaign at times felt spontaneous and chaotic, leaving questions on how he will govern. Throughout the campaign, most of his advisors were kept out of the spotlight except for Free Peru’s founder Vladimir Cerrón, who is seen as more radical than Castillo and said in April that Peru’s left should “learn to stay in power as has happened in Venezuela.” The party support an overt Marxist-Leninist platform that fundamentally aims to spread the wealth of Peru’s natural resources with all citizens. Castillo has also been linked to Movadef, the political movement of the Shining Path, the Maoist guerrillas who terrorized Peru in the 1980s and 1990s. Though fragments of the group still exist today, Castillo himself denies any association. Like Fujimori, Castillo is also a social conservative, opposed to legalizing gay marriage, abortion, and gender equity in education.

Policy-wise, Castillo shared he would like to nationalize segments of key economic sectors like mining and energy, restructure the pension system, and allocate 10 percent of the country’s GDP to the education and health systems. Peru’s entire government budget is currently 14 percent of GDP. Another central part of Castillo’s platform is a constitutional rewrite via a constitutional assembly. That said, the project will require congressional approval to move forward with a referendum needed on just the question of whether to convene an assembly.

In general, without a majority in congress, Castillo faces an uphill battle to carry out his agenda. Of the 130 seats in the legislature, Castillo’s Free Peru party holds 37, the largest party bloc elected, while Popular Force will have 24. Official coalitions in congress are still forming, with both parties picking up support from the 10 parties in the incoming session, with a few parties remaining unallied.

The outgoing legislature, whose members were barred from reelection, is taking steps to give the body more permanency. On the agenda for the June 9–11 meetings are the questions of restoring a bicameral congressional system, as well as the so-called “question of confidence," a constitutional mechanism that in theory gives the executive and legislative branches checks on each other, but was used to detrimental and dysfunctional effect during the previous term, with the president once dissolving the legislature and the Congress twice forcing the president to renew his cabinet. Under the current proposal, the president would only be able to dissolve a new lower chamber, protecting the members of the upper chamber from expulsion. All the while, the legislature would still retain the ability to unseat the president through claims of the president’s moral incapacity—the same process that left Peru in a presidential crisis in November 2020 that saw it cycle through three presidents in one week.

Meanwhile, Fujimori and her codefendants—who include her husband—will likely have their day in court, with a 30-year sentence for her on the line.

Holly K. Sonneland contributed to this article.