LIMA, June 1 — Thousands of people marched in Peru’s capital today against Keiko Fujimori, the frontrunner ahead of Sunday’s presidential runoff.
Marchers shouted slogans such as “Keiko No!” and “No to a state run by drug traffickers”, an allusion to her father, disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori.
His decade in office, veered from elected to almost authoritarian rule, and was plagued by corruption.
His supporters however praised his hard line against the communist guerrilla group Shining Path, and some economic strides.
Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing populist who would be Peru’s first woman president, is the political heir to her father’s controversial rule from 1990 to 2000.
Alberto Fujimori, 77, is now serving a 25-year sentence for massacres committed by an army death squad during his rule.
His daughter, 41, a right-wing populist with the Popular Force party, has 46 percent of public backing going into the June 5 vote, polling firm Ipsos found in a survey also published on Sunday.
Her rival, 77 year-old center-right economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, running under the banner of his self-created party Peruanos por Kambio (Peruvians for Change), is lagging with 40.6 per cent support.
But the group “Keiko No Va” (It is not going to be Keiko) organised the demonstration hoping its last chance to keep her from leading Peru would bear fruit.
Front and center in the protest was leftist Veronika Mendoza, who placed third in the first round. She has endorsed Kuczynski, despite huge ideological differences with him, in the hope of derailing Keiko Fujimori.
Some demonstrators carried a huge paper doll called an Ekeko, an Andean god of abundance, with money hung around its neck. In this case, it had Fujimori’s face on it.
Kuczynski, who goes by the nickname PPK, says a Keiko Fujimori presidency would be a return to widespread graft and abuse of power.
Kuczynski has vowed to create jobs if elected by boosting business and growth.
Peru has one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies despite a recent fall in commodity prices and a slowing under outgoing President Ollanta Humala.
Fujimori has promised to spend generously on infrastructure and to have more prisons built as part of a crackdown on crime. — AFP
