Latin America
Related: About this forumPeru votes for president in first round after months of chaos and scandal
Peruvians are voting for president and congress in a crowded election that will determine whether the nation can restore order after recent political chaos.
Polls show the presidential vote is too close to call and no single candidate will have enough support to avoid a June runoff. Over 25 million of the nation's 33 million people are eligible to vote.
Hanging over the race is the question of who can govern a country that has had three presidents since November, and where every elected head of state but one since 1985 has either been impeached, imprisoned or sought in criminal investigations.
Many voters are also angry after hundreds of well-connected Peruvians received Covid-19 shots in secret, in whats being called the vaccinegate scandal.
Former Congressman Yonhy Lescano, 62, was leading some major polls on April 4 - the last day results could be publicly released. Hes promised to share the countrys vast mining wealth more widely and bring down consumer interest rates.
At: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-11/peruvians-vote-for-president-after-months-of-chaos-and-scandal
Six of 18 Peruvian presidential candidates (clockwise): Veronica Mendoza, Hernando de Soto, George Forsyth, Rafael López Aliaga, Keiko Fujimori, and Yonhy Lescano.
Also running, among others, is former President Ollanta Humala.
While centrist former Congressman Yonhy Lescano leads polling, none in the crowded field has a clear majority - making a second round on June 6th all but inevitable.
Some 28% of Peruvians want "none of the above" according to a recent poll.
Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)What a car-wreck.
At least Peru is closer than ever to the day real justice will loom into view for the first time. Hope it's in the near future, but it has to happen, at long last. The innocent, good citizens have been waiting from the first day the Europeans slimed into Peru and started their bloodbath preceding their destruction of the original people, their society, enslaving the survivors, then ruling over them with hostility ever after, just as has happened throughout ALL the Americas.
Judi Lynn
(160,516 posts)APRIL 11, 2021 11:13 PMUPDATED AN HOUR AGO
By Reuters Staff
1 MIN READ
LIMA (Reuters) - Far left candidate Pedro Castillo is leading the Peruvian presidential race, according to a fast count conducted by pollster Ipsos, with conservative Keiko Fujimori in second place.
Ipsos said a fast count of 69.1% ballots from around the country showed Castillo had won 18.6% of the vote and Fujimori had won 14.5%, meaning both would go to a second round of the vote in June. Ipsos said its findings had a one-point margin of error.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peru-election/far-left-candidate-pedro-castillo-leads-peruvian-presidential-race-ipsos-fast-count-idUSKBN2BZ09P
(Short article, no more at link.)