Peru: Fujimori cries electoral fraud - and unleashes torrent of racism

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Peru: Fujimori cries electoral fraud – and unleashes torrent of racism

Claims of rightwing candidate, trailing Pedro Castillo in the polls, emboldens far right, who have vowed not to accept result

Dan Collyns
@yachay_dc
Sun 20 Jun 2021 10.00 BST

The prospect of the son of illiterate Andean peasants becoming president as his rival cries fraud has shaken Peru’s entrenched class system and its fragile democracy, letting loose a torrent of racism in the bicentennial year of the country’s independence.

With 100% of the official vote counted, leftist Pedro Castillo had 50.12% – and advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival Keiko Fujimori. But Fujimori has claimed fraud, challenging about 500,000 votes, calling for half to be annulled, and obliging officials at Peru’s electoral board to reexamine ballots – despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing.

Two weeks after the election, which national and international observers said was transparent, the stance of Keiko Fujimori – the daughter of jailed 1990s autocrat Alberto Fujimori – has emboldened the far right, who have vowed not to accept the election results.

In a move which illustrates the skewed playing field, Fujimori has recruited Lima’s most expensive law firms to quash 200,000 votes, almost all from poor Andean regions which voted overwhelmingly for Castillo.

“The tension has reached a breaking point,” said José Ragas, a Peruvian historian at Chile’s Catholic University. “The Lima elite is not just trying to keep power – it’s not just that they don’t want to recognise the victory of Pedro Castillo – but they are trying to cancel the rural vote.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/20/peru-elite-election-pedro-castillo-keiko-fujimori

[Judi Lynn]

1. It seems it doesn't matter how the European descended elitists like Keiko,

it's about how they hate the massive, poor indigenous Peruvians.

Morality has nothing at all to do with this, it's totally absent, as it was in the invasion and massacres, atrocities, slavery, and war upon those who couldn't escape.