Teacher wins spot in Peruvian presidential runoff

CHUGUR, Peru — Defying the polls, an elementary school teacher came in first among 18 candidates in Peru’s presidential election April 11 — albeit with less than 20% of the overall vote.

Pedro Castillo’s result gave him a place in June’s presidential runoff against Keiko Fujimori, one of Peru’s most established political figures and the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori. It is her third attempt to become president.

Castillo’s unlikely campaign comes at a turbulent time for the South American nation that has suffered like few others from the covid-19 pandemic. It recently ran through three presidents in a week after one was removed by congress over corruption allegations. Every president of the past 36 years has been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned.

Castillo’s politics mingle a nationalist, agrarian leftism with socially conservative impulses. He has proposed nationalizing mining, oil and energy sectors as well as deporting all immigrants living in the country illegally who commit crimes.

His chances of enacting his policies are uncertain. He would face a deeply divided unicameral congress that was newly elected on April 11. At the moment, his party has 37 of the 130 seats though the electoral counting to determine how many seats each party gets has not yet concluded.

It is also very much up in the air his chance of winning the June runoff against Fujimori. But whoever wins the runoff will have to cope with the economic hammer-blow of the pandemic, which prompted a lockdown of more than 100 days that left about 7 million people unemployed.