Three days after the runoff polls closed on June 5, with over 85% of votes counted, it was still impossible to tell who had won the Peruvian presidency. In a history-making year, the final swing votes came down to Peruvian citizens living abroad; and on the fourth day, with a margin of just over 41,000 votes—a record-setting 0.25%—congresswoman Keiko Fujimori conceded to her opponent, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
But even before the presidential results were announced, the legislative outcome had already reshaped the political landscape of Peru: Fujimori’s party, Fuerza Popular (Popular Force), won 71 seats in the Congressional election. Out of 130 total seats in Peru’s unicameral legislature, the right wing party gained an absolute majority—with Kuczynski’s center-right party, Peruanos por el Kambio (PPK or Peruvians for a Change), coming in second with a mere 20 seats.
The results of both sets of elections were unexpected, and crucial to the fate of one of Latin America’s fastest growing economies. They also tell the story of Peru’s still-fragile democracy.
In order to analyze the 2016 elections in both branches, it is important to first understand the Peruvian party system, a structure that is starkly different from the modern American reality. Peru has a multi-party system made of dozens of small parties that coalesce into broader political alliances depending on their interests in a given year. The system virtually prevents one party from becoming the decision-maker—a fact that makes Fuerza Popular’s success and Fujimori’s near-win that much more striking. Unlike American politics, which has been dominated for decades by the Democratic and Republican parties (despite platform shifts throughout the years), Peruvian parties are constantly evolving and being created. In fact, Kuczynski only founded and registered his party, awkwardly named PPK after his initials, in 2014. And they collapse easily: Gana Perú (Peru Wins), the leftist party represented by incumbent president Ollanta Humala, did not even reach the threshold of support required to win a congressional seat this election cycle.
Presidential elections, therefore, must follow a unique procedure since it is nearly impossible for a candidate to win a majority of the vote among so many opponents. As a result, Peru holds two elections: a general and a runoff, held in April and June respectively. The first election determines the top two candidates, and the runoff is held two months later between them exclusively. Historically, runoff votes have had small margins, but 2016 also witnessed a remarkable 2% margin between Kuczynski and the third-place finisher, Leftist Veronika Mendoza in the first round — to be followed up by Fujimori’s even smaller loss to Kuczynski in the second.
Meanwhile, Congressional elections are held concurrent to the first round presidential election. They follow a closed-list proportional representative system, which means that voters elect a party instead of a candidate, and party leaders then choose who they give seats to once the final allocation has been completed. The allocation method is also crucial to this process: Peru uses the D’Hondt system, which involves a lot of crazy math, and tends to favor larger parties. According to political scientists (who understand the above math and are not me) had Peru used almost any other formula, Fuerza Popular would not have won a Congressional majority. So even the so-called “landslide” win for Fujimori’s party was a numbers game.
Meanwhile, the country continues to act in reaction to its previous administrations—especially that of Keiko’s father, Alberto Fujimori, who was president from 1990-2000 and was convicted in 2009 of corruption and human rights abuses and sentenced to 25 years in prison. The tangible resistance to Keiko’s second bid for the presidency (a sentiment that many a cab driver communicated to me when I was in Lima in March) clearly reflects a fear that she and her party have not distanced themselves enough from the ghost of Alberto Fujimori’s rule. Though lacking a core ideology, the Peruvian body politic has come to align itself along ‘Fujimorista’ and ‘Anti-Fujimorista’ lines, with supporters of each falling on both sides of the political spectrum—a fact that has become a powerful driving force in all branches of government: the vote in June was widely seen as a referendum on the legacy of Alberto Fujimori.
Furthermore, the general trend toward rightist politics cannot be ignored: after a series of leftist Peruvian presidents and the disarray of neighboring socialist states, Peruvians chose two right-leaning parties to fight for the presidency. Surveys show that voters are unhappy with the levels of corruption and have low trust in government institutions, and the underlying issues of the campaign—race, class, and crime—demonstrate a general disappointment with the way that previous parties have addressed problems of inequality and law enforcement. While Fujimorismo (especially among Congressmen) tends to support more militarized law enforcement and rejects popular capitalism, Kuczynski’s PPK focuses on revitalizing Peru’s economy through open markets and increases in foreign investment.
All of these things are critical to understanding the position that Peru is currently in. In a country with virtually no political parties or dominant ideology, a Congress with weak oversight powers and even weaker enforcement capabilities, and chronic issues of corruption and crime, the next few years will be difficult for the president-elect. Kuczynski will have to negotiate an arrangement with the highly disciplined Fuerza Popular, which will retain the ability to remove him from office for the duration of their majority. So while the presidential election was historic, the seismic effects really occurred in the congressional chambers — and with the country so evenly torn on its executive leadership, a role historically fraught with scandal and impediments, Congress is likely to take on a crucial role in the coming years. As for Kuczynski, the ghost of Alberto Fujimori may not be that far behind him.