Peru

Numerous countries will hold elections in 2021. Here are ten to watch. 

President Martin Vizcarra’s ouster has caused turmoil and a leadership vacuum, amid economic turbulence and severe pandemic strains. Why has Peru endured so much political upheaval?

President Trump's no-show means less drama and more space at Summit of the Americas for the main theme of corruption. 

President Martín Vizcarra could be the man to break the thirty-year long corruption chain, but first, he must master the nearly impossible political terrain that undid his predecessor.

Scholars of Latin America spent much of the first decade of this century discussing the causes and consequences of the region's turn to the left, under Venezuela's Chávez, Argentina's Kirchners, Brazil's Workers' Party, and other variants of leftist parties. It was therefore perhaps not surprising that as the left began to lose power in the second decade of this century, journalists and academics began to talk of the region's tilt to the right. But looking across South America's political landscape, it becomes apparent that the region hasn't really turned toward right-leaning politics as much as it has chosen deadlock. In country after country, the president is governing with either minority support in Congress, or will be perilously close to doing so after upcoming elections. In Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) narrowly won the presidency over Keiko Fujimori, but her Fuerza Popular party gained 56% of Congress. This majority, combined with the divided Left, has empowered the Fuerza Popular to block PPK at every turn, including by removing PPK's ministers or forcing them to resign. Argentina's President Maurício Macri was able to move forward on a variety of reforms in his first year, but now faces a rockier outlook. Four months away from midterm elections that will be crucial to the fate of his market reforms, the ever-surprising former president, Cristina Kirchner last week announced that she was founding her own Unidad Ciudadana party, and declared herself a candidate for an open Buenos Aires Senate seat that she will contest against a close Macri ally. As one local pundit summarized the situation, Macri needs to defeat Kirchner to finally become president and convince investors fearful of a return to populism; Kirchner needs to destroy the Macri presidency if she is to have a political future. The midterm elections are widely thought to be a bellwether for the 2019 presidential election, but although some Macri gains are anticipated, it is not clear such gains would lead to a change in the balance of power in Congress that would enable Macri to move as quickly and surely on reform as he might wish. Brazil's stand-in president, Michel Temer, has lost all capacity to govern the fragmented Congress, whose members are running scared of losing their heads either from the sword of justice or the scimitar of popular disgust.  After some initial success on fiscal reform, social security reform is back on the back burner, labor reform has been narrowly blocked in committee, and tax reform, political reform, and other significant changes are a distant mirage. In Chile, Michelle Bachelet's approval ratings have been improving of late, and she hopes to move forward on same-sex marriage and infrastructure investment plans in her remaining months in office. She may yet do so, but her successor will likely have a harder time of it. Polling in the presidential election continues to tip between Chile Vamos' Sebastián Piñera and the Nueva Mayoria's presumptive nominee, Alejandro Guillier, who have each polled in the 20 to 25 percent range in recent months. The 155-seat lower house, and 23 of 50 Senate seats, are also pending in the November elections. Concomitant elections for the executive branch and much of the legislature may ensure the presidential winner has some legislative coattails. But the extreme fragmentation of this year's primaries, the breakup of the old anti-authoritarian coalition, declining voter turnout, and simmering protests raise questions about the political system's ability to manufacture a convincing legislative majority. This may matter less in Chile than in some parts of Latin America, given the broad Chilean consensus around economic policies, but it does suggest that governance under the next president will not be an easy matter. In Colombia, former presidents Álvaro Uribe and Andrés Pastrana are doing everything they can to make certain that the election campaign is polarized around the peace deal, thus continuing the back-and-forth between those critical of the deal and supporters of President Juan Manuel Santos' effort. The initial candidate of Uribe's Centro Democrático party, Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, has had to withdraw due to allegations in the Odebrecht case, but that does not seem to have weakened the "no" side's resolve. The more that fissures around the peace deal dominate the 2018 election cycle, the less likely that other issues will become a matter of debate. In a political landscape in which former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras leads, but no other candidate is yet a clear second-place contender, emphasizing the shortcomings of the peace deal makes strategic sense. But the longer-term upshot may be a deepening of the polarization that emerged around the October plebiscite on the peace deal. The path toward deadlock is by no means certain. But in a context of sluggish regional growth, a massive regional corruption scandal, declining trust in democratic institutions, and the fracturing of traditional political parties, the possibility of gridlock does raise red flags. Influential social scientists have long warned of the perils of presidentialism, with its tendency toward zero-sum politics and regime breakdown. Over the past twenty years, Latin America has largely managed to avoid these perils through coalition-making and consensus-building. But the region's susceptibility to stalemate suggests these may yet become tense times for the region's democracies.

This is a guest blog post by Ivan Rebolledo, managing partner of TerraNova Strategic Partners. Sunday’s election pitted the two versions of the Peruvian right against each other: the populist, Keiko Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular party, and the liberal, Pedro Pablo Kuczynksi (PPK) of the Peruanos por el Kambio party, with the latter’s win confirmed Thursday afternoon. In 2011, Ollanta Humala eventually won the second round, over Fujimori, with votes from the liberal right and center. PPK did it with votes primarily from the left, including important support from Veronika Mendoza and her Frente Amplio party. Since then, Fujimori has attempted to clean up her party’s image by removing the more controversial leaders and selecting better congressional candidates. Her 40 percent win in the first round showed this strategy’s success, as she garnered support from all socioeconomic classes. However, during the second round campaign, Fujimori campaign insiders were secretly taped and allegedly linked to drug trafficking, reminding the electorate of similar scenarios during her father’s presidency. She failed to quickly distance herself from the intrigue, which in the end thwarted her campaign. Though PPK was trailing due to his lackluster second-round campaign performance, close affinity to the United States including one-time U.S. citizenship, and years in the international banking sector, Fujimori’s problems became his successes, swaying the popular vote in his favor. This is the first time that the liberal right has won a democratic election in Peru. And it is the first time a candidate wins without espousing leftist rhetoric to then govern from the right. Clearly PPK is a free-market reformer (Peru sovereign bonds rallied yesterday after his confirmed victory). No one should be surprised when he implements liberal economic policies, as so many were with Humala’s turn to the right. The left knows this and still they voted for him. PPK’s tremendous gains between the first and second round create real weaknesses for his administration. He won just 21 percent of first-round votes, the other 30 percent “borrowed” from those opposing Fujimori. He also comes in with just eighteen representatives, or 14 percent of Congress. Few leaders have such meager parliamentary support. Now PPK’s biggest dilemma will be how to consolidate political power, which will probably mean working with Fujimori and her party. His top priorities should be crime and security; dealing with immense government corruption; accelerating economic growth by shrinking the informal sector; diversifying the economy away from extractive to manufacturing industries; and fortifying Peru’s role regionally and globally.

While the world is distracted by Brazil’s impeachment drama, Venezuela’s impending meltdown, and Cuba’s promising détente with Washington, a potentially significant election campaign is underway in Peru that may have long-term implications for the success of the region’s “right turn.” Two candidates with robust neoliberal credentials are neck and neck in the second round contest that will take take place on June 5, and will determine who governs the country through 2021. Perhaps because of the similarities in the likely economic policies of the two contenders, not much foreign media attention has been focused on the election: regardless of who wins, Peru seems likely to continue with outward looking initiatives, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Pacific Alliance, while practicing market-friendly policies at home. But precisely because the economic policies of the two candidates are so similar—prominent Peruvian columnist and political scientist Alberto Vergara notes that whichever candidate governs Peru beginning in late July, their cabinet will be composed of technocrats who could serve their rival—observers have not focused on the underlying significance of this election to the democratic legitimacy of Latin America’s new rightward turn. The election takes place against the backdrop of the commodity bust that has diminished President Ollanta Humala to virtual insignificance (his approval ratings are under 15 percent), and a fractious party system, organized—to the extent that it is organized at all—around the legacy of disgraced and jailed President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori, who governed by electoral and then authoritarian means from 1990 to 2000, and whose daughter, Keiko Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular (FP) won almost 40 percent in the first round of voting, famously vanquished the Sendero Luminoso and then was himself vanquished by revelations of massive corruption and human rights abuses. But the fact that Fujimori’s legacy is the lodestar that provides the basic orientation of the electoral contest does not mean that anti-Fujimorismo is an orderly or organized opposition. Indeed, Peru’s 21 million voters fragmented in the first round between a variety of inchoate political forces. Most organized were those of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) of the PPK party and Verónika Mendoza of the left-leaning Frente Amplio, who competed in a nail-biting race for second place, in which PPK triumphed by 20.1 percent to Mendoza’s 18.8 percent. Following them in the electoral lists were a panoply of other candidates, some of whom were disqualified by the electoral court at the last minute, and others who garnered single-digit returns. PPK’s second place finish behind Keiko Fujimori means that the central debate of the second round has been around public security and family life issues, such as same sex marriage and abortion rights. But the fragmentation of the opposition in the first round meant that the election will to some extent be a referendum on the desired strength of checks and balances. If Fujimori wins, her Fuerza Popular will control Congress (73 of 130 seats), a majority that she could presumably use to pardon her father, or worse yet, to stack the judiciary, electoral bodies, or other oversight agencies. Understandably, Fujimori has done everything possible to downplay such possibilities, but there is a strong credible commitment problem at work: if she wins, there may be little constraint on her worst inclinations, whatever those might be. The Keiko campaign has understandably taken every opportunity to make the point that she is not her father, that the battles of the old generation must be buried, and that the mafia-authoritarianism of the 1990s has been left behind. She has stressed her commitment to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and emphasized her democratic credentials at every step of the process. Oddly, PPK’s campaign has not been successful in pushing this narrative, and ominously for his chances, PPK’s own rejection rates have risen even as Keiko’s fell. Part of the problem is that PPK was himself running a deeply personalistic campaign—his party shares his own initials, after all—and he has had to dilute his own message in the second round to bring on board the disparate anti-Fujimori forces to his left. Also damaging is the fact that PPK himself openly supported Keiko in the 2011 runoff against Humala. The central PPK campaign message, that Fujimorismo has not changed and remains a potent threat to democracy, has been lost in the din over family life and rule of law concerns. PPK has not been very good at pushing the argument that he helped to reconstruct Peru as a minister in the post-Fujimori Alejandro Toledo cabinet, in part because Toledo’s legacy is a mixed one that may not help PKK with undecided voters. And so far, at least, PPK’s anti-corruption rhetoric has neither lowered voter support for Keiko, nor gained him fresh new support of his own. Looking forward, Vergara notes that whichever candidate is chosen to lead Peru will have the tough task of building institutions that can address the political fragilities of Peru’s consolidating democracy. Amidst a slowing economy, not many Peruvians will be thinking about how to improve the institutionalization of the party system or the workings of anti-corruption agencies. But ultimately, this could prove to be the most important legacy of the next presidency.

Hillel Soifer’s new book, State Building in Latin America, presents an interesting historical perspective on today’s current state capacity in Latin America, and why some countries are so much better able than others to not just control territory but also to deliver for their people. Somewhat dispiritingly, he finds that state capacity, measured in terms of education, health care, military mobilization, and other indicators has changed little over the last century. Government agencies’ abilities haven’t deviated much, despite the rise and fall of conservatives and populists, of democrats and dictators, of economic booms and busts. None seem to have fundamentally altered the ability of states to provide public goods. Those that were strong in 1900 are strong now; those weak then remain so. So what made the difference? He lays out two factors that emerged in the nineteenth century: whether political elites tried to build a strong state and then whether they succeeded. These in turn depend on other causes. The decision to try depends on whether elites clustered in one or in many cities or regions. Those with a single center were more likely to see state building as the way to “order and progress,” extending the center toward the periphery. Those with multiple hubs of economic and political activity were less likely to develop a coherent ideology, much less one that involved building up the central government. For those countries that did embark on a state building mission, other factors determined whether it worked or not. If the national government sent out its own bureaucrats to deliver services, the state grew in abilities and reach. If they left it to local elites, little happened. He then shows how these arguments apply to four cases: Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Mexico. Colombia never tried to create a stronger state; Peru tried and failed; Mexico and Chile both tried and succeeded to varying degrees. Soifer’s empirical chapters draw on government archives, newspaper announcements, immunization records, school enrollments, and many other sources, tracing the efforts and outcomes to try and build up the central government’s capacity. In his exhaustive research, he finds some interesting kernels that shed light on today’s pressing topics. For instance in Mexico in the late 1800s, school systems developed differently by state. In Michoacán and Guerrero local elites controlled the rollout, and enrollment stagnated, even back then. In Sonora and other northern states, the building out of their educational systems was turned over to bureaucrats from out-of-town; the number of kids entering school surged. These trajectories led to the deep divides that continue today and are at the center of the current struggle to reform Mexico’s education system. With “nation building” an at times uneasy part of U.S. foreign policy, Soifer’s carefully constructed argument and analysis provides insight into why it is so hard to do. It isn’t a lack of resources that many bemoan. It is oftentimes alliances with local elites. While they may quell unrest in the short term, they also can undermine the project itself, elevating challengers rather than allies in the quest to build government capacity. His work shows too that ideas matter: without leaders committed to a stronger state little will occur, whatever the intentions of outside participants and donors. For Latin America, his work leads to a clear eyed but somewhat pessimistic conclusion. The World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, IMF, and others routinely identify the same set of factors as holding the region back: bad infrastructure, poor schools, weak rule of law, inequality, low productivity. Soifer’s conclusions suggest the usual policy recommendations—doling out concessions and forming public-private partnerships, writing new textbooks and instituting teacher evaluations, or retraining police and rewriting judicial rules—won’t change things. The challenge is a more fundamental one of capacity. And the question remaining is are there other paths than those he expertly illustrates to creating a better and stronger state.