Will right-wing Peruvian demagogue Keiko Fujimori burn the country down
before accepting defeat?
DANIEL ESPINOSA·JUNE 12, 2021 The Grayzone
Despite a wave of anti-communist propaganda and mysterious terrorist
massacre, leftist teacher Pedro Castillo has triumphed in Perus
presidential election. But his right-wing rival refuses to accept the
results.
LIMA, PERU Keiko Fujimori, the political heiress to the jailed Peruvian
former dictator Alberto Fujimori, appears to have lost her third election in
a row. This time, she has been defeated by Pedro Castillo, a leftist teacher
from the rural Andes who narrowly leads in a deliberately delayed poll.
Facing a possible 30 years sentence for an array of corruption-related
charges, Keiko is now challenging hundreds of thousands of ballots already
deemed to be valid.
In a move that resembles former US President Donald Trumps recent defeat
and subsequent rejection of election results, Fujimori is going for a
hat-trick: she has called fraud on the two last elections after losing,
both times without success.
This time, only a small suburban elite, a concentration of corporate outlets
controlled by the El Comercio Group and several ultraconservative
publications are on Keikos side. However, she is attempting to compel the
masses into the streets in a move that is as irresponsible as it is
dangerous and which bears distinctive echoes of Trump inciting his
fanatics to storm the US Capitol.
So far, the Peruvian military has respected its mandate as a
non-deliberative body, and has avoided interfering in the political contest.
Even the Organization of American States and Human Rights Watch, two bodies
which normally side with right-wing candidates in Latin America, have openly
rejected Fujimori´s accusation of fraud, and called for a swift resolution
of her weak complaints. For their part, international observers agree that
the poll was clean.
Fujimori firmly controlled the Congress from 2016 to 2020, shaping years of
political turmoil in what many saw as a bitter revenge for not winning the
Presidency back in 2016, when she lost a hard-fought second round against
the now infamous Pedro Pablo Kukzcynski, who now lives under house arrest
for bribery.
In the last years of a congressional term where her party, the highly
disciplined Fuerza Popular, enjoyed a comfortable majority and many allies,
Keiko directed everything, from an impeachment push to the advancement of
measures deemed essential by her powerful corporate backers.
In 2018, for example, her party blocked a law that would have informed
consumers about high levels of dangerous food additives in many popular
snack products, risking the profit margins of a business tycoon, Dionisio
Romero Jr., who covertly donated millions of dollars for Fujimoris past
campaigns. He did so by taking backpacks filled with cash to Keiko and her
close advisors.
But the years of political control also brought to light revelations
regarding Odebrecht and illegal financial backing like the one mentioned
above: millions of dollars from the Brazilian corporation tied to Lava Jato
and the Peruvian banking and corporate elite went unaccounted for, or was
smurfed into many fake and smaller backers, fractioning the money in
lesser and legal donation amounts.
This years presidential election in Peru should have ended a few days ago,
as over 98% of votes have been tabulated. But Fujimori´s denunciations of
fraud, disingenuously accepted as legitimate by the conservative press and
sectors of the countrys political establishment, have completely stalled
Castillos validation as president. Today, Peru is waiting for a decision
that might take weeks, risking a dangerous surge of social turmoil in the
streets.
A disgraced corporate media empire drives communist apocalypse panic
A fear campaign targeting Lima, where slightly less than a third of
Peruvians live, has driven the political polarization of Peruvian society to
degrees rarely seen in decades.
But the deed did not go unnoticed: just a few days ago, a dozen journalists
were fired or forced to resign from the most important TV channel in the
country, America Television, part of the El Comercio Group, drawing the
attention of regulators and the public alike. The local institution for
ethics in journalism had grown alarmed by the evident degradation of the
Peruvian press, where more than 70% of the news are owned and controlled by
the mentioned corporate conglomerate, and called for a review over the way
journalism is conducted the country, and emphasized the need to reform it.
The aggressive propaganda campaign driven by Keikos campaign warned
Peruvians of a communist apocalypse if Pedro Castillo was elected, sowing
panic among the upper and middle classes of Lima, spawning irrational hatred
that tore friendships and families apart. The intensity of the red-scare
propagated by El Comercio, the rest of the mainstream media and the
right-wing establishment, reflected the paranoia of the local aristocracy,
an achievement in psychological war that nevertheless failed to stymie a
Castillo victory.
Mysterious and expensive illuminated billboards suddenly appeared across the
busiest avenue of Lima cautioning the public about how Socialism leading to
Communism, Communism is Poverty, and about the need to Defend Freedom
and Democracy. The defense of the country against the evil specter of
communism was equated with voting for Keiko Fujimori, who, like Jair
Bolsonaro before her, campaigned while wearing the national soccer jersey.
Just as anti-Americanism was equated with promoting socialism during the
Cold War in the US, here in Peru, leftists are widely demonized as
anti-Peruvian.
Beyond the public relations scare campaign that played out in the street,
major corporations threatened their employees with the loss of their jobs if
they failed to vote for the right-winger, an intimidation campaign that is
technically illegal in Peru and in most democracies.
The hysteria among Keikos base has reached the point where many are not
only convinced that the country is falling not only into the hands of a
stereotypical communist dictatorship, but also into the hands of the Shining
Path, a brutal Maoist insurgent group that was totally defeated and mostly
destroyed in 1992 under the presidency of Alberto Fujimori.
A highly suspicious massacre that took place in the jungle locality San
Miguel del Ene on May 23, where sixteen people where murdered, including two
children, reopened wounds and memories of the bloody years of terrorism that
ravaged Peru.
A mysterious massacre fuels Keikos anti-communist campaign of fear
The attack in San Miguel del Ene was immediately attributed to a
narco-terrorist group that splintered from the Shining Path more than a
decade ago to pursue the cocaine business. But the Militarizado Partido
Comunista del Peru (MPCP), as the remnants of the Shining Path calls itself
these days, has not been known to engage in political attacks like the
aforementioned massacre.
Mysteriously, flyers were found at the site of the massacre with an ominous
message that could have only benefitted one of the candidates in the race:
Dont vote for Keiko Fujimori
.
The Peruvian militarys assessment that the disappeared Shining Path were
definitely responsible for the killings drove public fear to new heights,
and propelled Keikos popularity. Yet the military failed to consider that
the Shining Path and MPCP are bitter enemies, or that the former groups
leadership is either long dead or in prison. Further, the investigation into
the massacre had been fully in the hands of the police not the army.
Predictably, the pro-Keiko El Comercio media conglomerate seized on the
armys version of the killings to determine the Shining Paths culpability
ipso facto. When independent reporters went to the scene of the crime,
however, they heard testimony that raised serious questions about the
official story.
Instead, every local in a hundred miles around San Miguel del Ene, the
village where sixteen were brutally murdered, provided testimony completely
at odds with the official version. Villagers said they knew the
narco-terrorists well, referring to them as cousins and uncles when they
enter their towns. They explained that killing civilians in such fashion
would not only deprive the narcos of workers for their coca fields, but also
risk alienating the people from those localities, which they depend on for
information, services, and labor.
Among many other details disregarded by the mainstream press and
authorities, many witnesses told the independent Peruvian outlet Hildebrandt
en sus trece that moments before the attack, phone and electrical services
were cut-off. Locals said this happens every time the military is about to
initiate a raid against the narco-traffickers. One female survivor described
the attackers as normal people, dressed not like terrorists, the police or
the army.
Immediately after the killing, three to five attackers were seen fleeing the
scene in motorcycles a vehicle not normally associated with narco-gangs
in the direction of a locality called Valle Esmeralda, where a military
detachment is based.
As expected, the papers comprising El Comercios pro-Keiko tabloid empire
ignored every piece of witness testimony detailed above.
Is the fear of Castillo justified?
During the first round of voting, a whopping 70% of voters did not choose
either Pedro Castillo or Keiko Fujimori. Despite that fact, neither
candidate attempted to moderate their tone to appeal to a wider constituency
until the very end of the campaign.
Although the talk about nationalization of natural resources and key
industries is obvious red line for the countrys conservative right-wing,
Castillo has also been notoriously inconsistent, telling one thing to
certain audiences in his tour around Peru, and then another to television
cameras, concerned authorities and opposition journalists. Castillos
economic gaffes during several press conferences highlighted his urgent need
for PR support and careful political management.
Even after Castillo toned down his rhetoric, only a small portion of the
undecided segment of voters said they would consider voting for him. Many
had been convinced that Vladimir Cerron, the avowedly Marxist leader of
Castillos party, Peru Libre, was calling the shots from behind the scenes.
In fact, one of the main themes of the right-wing propaganda blitz of recent
weeks has been presenting Cerron as the real power behind Castillos throne.
The focus on Cerron was particularly damaging given that a criminal verdict
against him was recently lifted by a notoriously unscrupulous judge. Issued
during the most heated days of the election, the decision appeared
suspicious, and now poses a serious risk of inflaming an already explosive
situation by sending more people to the streets in opposition to Cerrons
return to political influence.
Peru Libre is constituted in part by education syndicalists like Castillo,
but also maintains loose ties to MOVADEF, a political movement that seeks
amnesty for convicted terrorists. Its members actively participate in
different branches of the same public syndicate as the left-wing teacher and
de facto President. This is why many citizens taken in by the right-wing
medias fear mongering regard the surge of Peru Libre as a terrorist
threat.
However, the accusation is simply baseless. In reality, Castillo was a
rondero who helped lead peasant civilian militias that were officially
recognized by the Peruvian government to defend small towns in the Andes
against the Shining Path terrorist cells during the 1980s and early 90s.
Indeed, the stigmatized MOVADEF members do not promote violence; instead,
they advocate political participation and reconciliation between fully
rehabilitated former terrorists and the citizenry at large.
Following a deluge of anti-communist propaganda aimed at reviving the ghosts
of modern Perus darkest days, and without an impartial or remotely
professional press to counterbalance it, the country is entering into
dangerous territory. History, however, seems already written: international
institutions, and even establishmentarian entities, are rejecting Keikos
caustic ploys and recognizing Pedro Castillo as the next president of Peru.