Peru’s knife-edge election could be good news for Latin America’s left | Tony Wood

The socialist candidate Pedro Castillo is on the verge of victory, but a hostile elite could stymie his agenda

Peru's presidential election has been settled by the slimmest of margins, but it signals a momentous change. When all the votes from the second-round run-off on Sunday 6 June were finally counted, the socialist Pedro Castillo, former head of the main teacher's union, held a razor-thin lead of about 60,000 votes - 0.34% - over Keiko Fujimori, candidate of the right and daughter of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori. She has now launched accusations of fraud, demanding that as many as 200,000 votes be nullified. It may take several days for her legal challenges to be heard, and she is clearly still hoping to overturn the result - though the prospect is unlikely. The fact remains that millions of Peruvians joined together to deliver a telling blow to the political and economic model that has dominated the country for the past three decades.

The electoral drama in Peru was in that sense a generational reckoning, comparable to the recent upheavals in Chile and Colombia. But it was also the product of the specific political crises Peru has endured in recent years. Since 2018, the country has had two presidents impeached and removed on charges of corruption and one hounded from office by a surge of protests. The sleaze and dysfunction of the established parties was one of the factors that enabled Castillo's shock breakthrough in the first round of voting in April.