Hook-shaped markets, while Peruvians vote in closed elections

Financial markets were tense, while Peruvians voted Sunday in one of the most polarized elections in the country’s history, with private polls showing candidates.

The election pits Pedro Castillo, a rural elementary school teacher who became a hard-left populist, against Keiko Fujimori, the widely disliked daughter of Peru’s former authoritarian president, Alberto Fujimori. The elections are taking place at a time of historic challenges for Peru, which is battling one of the world’s worst coronavirus pandemics, corruption, inequality, poverty and political struggles.

The prospect of a Castillo victory has awakened panic and capital flight among the Peruvian elite. According to Scotiabank, the currency, the sun, has depreciated more against the dollar than any other in the world since the first round of voting in April, when Castillo emerged. Dollar-to-sun transactions have risen about 20% in the last month.

Private polls circulating on social media show the neck and neck of the contest. Polls initially gave Castillo a wide lead, but now suggest Fujimori has narrowed the gap.

“For the love of Peru, I hope it’s true,” a woman told the Financial Times after voting in the upscale Miraflores neighborhood on a gray, foggy morning in the Peruvian capital. “If not, we are lost.”

Castillo’s Free Peru party is led by a Marxist who advocates widespread nationalization, higher taxes, a new constitution, and a limitation on imports in one of the world’s largest producers of copper, zinc, and precious metals.

“The worst result would be for no one to win convincingly,” said Paula Muñoz, a political scientist at the University of the Pacific in Lima. “The loser is likely to cry fraud and can cause discomfort.”

Last week, a group of retired military officers said they were deeply concerned about “the radicalization of a large part of our population.” The Ministry of Defense has reported that civilians from some parts of the country “pretended to be members of the Peruvian army” and that in affluent areas of Lima people have stored food in anticipation of the post-election shortage and possible violence . Sunday morning, heavily armed soldiers were out of the polling stations.

The massacre of 16 people in a remote area of Peru on May 23, an attack accused of the remains of Peru’s Maoist guerrilla group, Shining Path, has been added to the tension.

“The atmosphere has been poisonous for weeks,” said Enrique Grau, a 38-year-old shopkeeper. “He speaks ill of us as a people that we can’t do better than that.”

From winning the first round with only 18.9 percent, Castillo has been waking up people in abandoned, poor villages in the Andes with a simple but powerful message: “There are no more poor people in a rich country.”

On Thursday, at the closing rally, he appeared on the balcony of downtown Lima with his giant straw hat and waving the large yellow inflatable pencil that has characterized his campaign. The hat marks him as a country man, while the pencil is his symbol of education.

“I bring you greetings from those who have no voice, from those who are anonymous, from those who consider themselves third- or fourth-class citizens,” he shouted at thousands of red-flag supporters in the streets below.

“That’s what we’ve been waiting for for decades,” said Mariela Rojas, a 47-year-old housewife, shouting above the noise. “We finally have a candidate who understands us.”

The closing concentration of Fujimori on the outskirts of Lima was much more moderate. Her candidacy to become the first woman president in the history of Peru has been complicated by allegations of corruption that she denies. Prosecutors accuse her of being the head of a criminal organization and say she should be jailed for 30 years.

Many middle-class Peruvians say that while they don’t like and distrust her, they will vote for her anyway to keep Castillo from power. He and his supporters are accused of being communists and, in some cases, terrorists.

“I will vote for Keiko because I don’t want my country to become the next Venezuela or Cuba,” said María Alejandra Lozada, a 24-year-old law student who came out to greet Fujimori for the northern city of Trujillo campaign.

The atmosphere has deteriorated as voting approaches. In the final televised debate, Fujimori produced a large rock that he said had been thrown to his entourage during the campaign in the Andes and named Castillo “Pedro the stone thrower.”

Both sides have suggested the other could steal the election, which they have played against terrible backdrop of the pandemic. This week, Peru revised its death toll up from less than 70,000 to 180,000, giving it the highest number of deaths per capita in the world. Last year, a tight shutdown plunged the economy into a deep recession, but failed to curb the spread of the virus, fueling outrage. Many voters wore plastic face shields as they went to vote.

Although many Peruvians are repulsed by both candidates and may want to stay home in the face of the pandemic, voting is mandatory in the 32 million country.

“I’m going to rip off my ballot,” a woman told the Financial Times on the eve of voting. “I just want to get this farce out of the way and get home safely.”