Sibling rivalry threatens Fujimori’s bid ahead of vote

LIMA: A spat between presidential contender Keiko Fujimori and her younger brother over the future leadership of the political movement they inherited from their ex-president father could cost her key votes in Peru’s tight June 5 run-off election.

Keiko Fujimori threatened to throw Kenji Fujimori out of her political party after he stoked fears that the family harbors dynastic intentions by saying he will run for president in the next elections in 2021 if she loses this year.

Keiko Fujimori had vowed that no one with the Fujimori surname would seek the presidency in 2021 before her brother declared on Twitter: “the decision is mine.”

“I’ve spoken with him... for us this chapter is closed” Keiko Fujimori, a 40-year-old former congresswoman, said Wednesday.

Critics said the dispute has laid bare a rift at the heart of their center-right party, Fuerza Popular, as patriarch Alberto Fujimori languishes in prison for corruption and human rights abuses committed during his 19902000 government.

“Fujimori and her brother are fighting about who will get the pi ata in 2021!” Fujimori’s rival Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a centrist economist, told reporters. “Peru is not a pi ata.”

Kenji Fujimori, a 35-year-old lawmaker, has defended Alberto Fujimori more stridently than his sister and is widely seen as leading his father’s hardline loyalists.

Keiko Fujimori has striven to distance herself from her father’s authoritarian rule and seized on her brother’s defiance to shore up her democratic credentials. — Reuters