Peruvians head to polls to elect president, divided by class and geography
June 6, 2021
3:08 AM CDT
Americas
Marco AquinoMarcelo Rochabrun
4 minute read
Peruvians will pick a president on Sunday in an election that has bitterly divided them by class and geography, with urban and higher-income citizens preferring right-wing Keiko Fujimori while the rural poor support leftist political novice Pedro Castillo.
Polls in the runoff election are to open at 7 a.m. (1200 GMT) in most of the country’s 11,700 voting centres, with official results starting to arrive from 11:30 p.m. (0430 GMT on Monday).
The voting is happening days after Peru almost tripled its coronavirus death toll following a government review. Peru now has the world's worst coronavirus death rate per capita.
Polls show the race in a statistical dead heat but with Fujimori, who had earlier trailed Castillo, pulling slightly ahead.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/peruvians-head-polls-elect-president-divided-by-class-geography-2021-06-06/
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By Camilo Gómez
BBC Monitoring
Published 9 hours ago
AFP
image captionThe run-off vote between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori is the most divisive election in Peru's recent history
Peru's presidential run-off on Sunday will be the Andean country's most polarised election in its recent history.
The vote pits a left-wing teacher and populist political newcomer, Pedro Castillo, against a household name, right-winger Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of jailed ex-President Alberto Fujimori.
Uncertainty has gripped this country ahead of what polls have predicted will be a very close race.
Mr Castillo was the unexpected winner of the first round in April, which saw votes split among a wide field of candidates.
The teacher, who likes to campaign in a cowboy hat and often carries an oversized pencil - the symbol of his Free Peru party - won nearly 19% of the votes, followed by Ms Fujimori with 13.4%.
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-57341541?piano-modal
Guess which candidate's dictator father, who was sent to prison, had many indigenous women sterilized against their will in what many many Peruvians perceive as a form of genocide. Guess which candidate's dictator father used death squads against the poor who dared to protest their suffering. Hard to tell?
