BREAKING: Chaos & Accusations in Peruvian Election

Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Darryl Morris for Times Radio, + Extras.

Transcript

Darryl Morris 0:00

In an election that has thirty-five candidates, a large chunk of the former presidents are now in prison, and there have been reports of long delays, corruption, all sorts of chaos in Peru, where uh where our Latin American correspondent Jon Bonfiglio is watching for us. Uh Jon, evening. What on earth is happening?

Jon Bonfiglio 0:17

Yeah, look, I mean it was already a day of of high tension in Peru, but that's now multiplied with what's being referred to as electoral chaos in the country. We've seen voting materials delivered late, delayed openings of polling stations, queues kilometres long in places, and voting extended um uh um across the country, all of which is problematic enough. But the uh the events are now being seen in parts as an attempt at electoral fraud. Uh Trump-aligned candidate Rafael Lopez is calling into question the integrity of the vote, and he's not alone.

Darryl Morris 0:49

And and um okay, so with long queues, um pro problems with people being actually being able to vote, and all against the backdrop of years of political chaos. So what sort of got us here in the first place?

Jon Bonfiglio 1:02

Yeah, I mean, I absolutely um part of the sort of infrastructural problem that Peru has had for a generation now is the fact that it can almost politically feed on it on itself. And so what you've got is you've got um a well, up until now, actually, because this is about to change, uh, for that sort of 25-year period, you've had a single Congress that has found it fairly straightforward to impeach and vote out uh president. So there's been this sort of this death spiral of political chaos in the fun in in the country. But today, crucially, Peru is returning to a bicameral democracy for the first time in that uh generation since the dictatorship of of um Alberto uh uh Fujimori. So you've got this um you've got this this question, I guess, now in which you know not only what is the emerging make-up of of Congress and will it be able to sort of step forward beyond it, but but um the I guess the architecture of Peruvian democracy is shifting completely. And you know, and the question is, can it can it stop itself from following these sort of uh this this uh repeated um uh uh diving into chaos that it's done for for that particular period of time? I mean, to some extent it you know that there is corruption endemic in the country, and of course the the citizens are voting on that today, but it is also fundamentally an infrastructural problem with democracy in Peru.

Darryl Morris 2:20

When do we get some answers to those questions?

Jon Bonfiglio 2:22

We'll get some answers in the next hours. Well, I mean, depending on the chaos and how that evolves, we'll get some answers in the in the next couple of days. One of the interesting issues is the fact that there's no of the 35 candidates, there's no clear front runner. So um uh right winger Keiko Fujimori, who is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the the dictator of the 90s, is expected to be one of the two individuals that goes through to the to the second round. But as regards the second candidate who will join her on June the 7th, uh nobody can really say uh clearly at all who that's going to be.

Darryl Morris 2:49

Okay, uh brilliant stuff, John. Thank you so much. We'll keep an eye on that as it uh develop uh develops. Appreciate your time, Jon. Thank you. No problem, take it. Hi everyone.

Jon Bonfiglio 2:57

Uh I just wanted to add a couple of things after that. Um sort of fly by night uh interview with with Daryl Morris just about the functionalities of this um election. We're talking about 27 million Peruvians who are eligible to vote. Voting is compulsory in the country for um 18-year-olds and upwards. And um as well as the presidency, as we mentioned before, we've also got congressional elections uh set to be bicameral once again. As regards campaign issues, we're talking about crime. I mean, when don't we talk about crime these days? But but statistically in Peru, homicide rates have doubled in the last five years. And uh remarkably, one in three people report having someone who has been a victim of extortion. Beyond that, corruption, big topic. Thirdly, the uh the economy, which still hasn't really recovered, and again, as in so many cases from a uh from a sort of a COVID um context. And then as with the uh Chilean elections recently, migration two and uh very specifically, or in particular, Venezuelan migration, uh, and Keiko Fujimori, for her part, has promised um, I mean, she's running on a law and order and economic stability platform, but she's also promised the deportation of all uh of all migrants. Um I think a bigger question really is how does a country like Peru rebuild its democratic institutions, which is definitely trying to do, but you know, the infrastructural problem, almost the existential problem, is that these are the individuals that are most likely to be elected and to control uh the rebuild of these institutions directly have a vested interest in in their weaknesses. Um in the next 24 hours, we'll do a sort of a breakdown of which way the vote's gone and do an analysis of what that looks like, why that looks like it, and what's likely to come up in the in the second round, and then any other interesting bits and bulbs of which there are bound to be a few.