There are over sixty—that’s right, 60—candidates competing to become Colombia’s president for the period from 2022 to 2026. Clearly not all of them are going to make it to the final ballot.
With his historic inauguration, Pedro Castillo put one crisis to rest and turned his attention to numerous others: foremost among them, how to repair a healthcare system devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and overhaul a brittle and uneven economy that has failed many Peruvians.
¿Cómo surgió esta angustiosa elección? ¿Y qué significa la aparente, y extremadamente ajustada, victoria de Castillo para Perú?
How did Peru’s agonizing choice between Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori come about? And what is Castillo’s extremely narrow apparent victory—by a mere 0.42 percent of total votes cast—likely to mean for Peru?
On April 11, 2021, Peru achieved a dubious distinction that has yet to receive much public attention: for the first time in the history of global electoral democracy, the total of blank and null votes exceeded the amount of votes received by any single candidate running to serve as a country’s head of state.
Keiko Fujimori’s arrest happened a week after Peru’s Supreme Court overturned the medical pardon of her father, and ordered his immediate return to prison.
Peru’s president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, reshuffled his cabinet after the opposition-controlled Congress passed a vote of no confidence. Meanwhile, Odebrecht-related corruption scandals continue to bloom in the country.
Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is struggling to regain control of the political agenda
