Peru: Alberto Fujimori's daughter is running for president

The daughter of Alberto Fujimori, the jailed former president of Peru, has launched a campaign to claim her dad's old job and is a strong contender in a wide field leading into elections next year.

As expected, Keiko Fujimori announced her candidacy earlier this month for elections scheduled in April. The 35-year-old former congresswoman organized her own political party, Fuerza 2011, in order to run. She led in preliminary polls this summer but has since slipped to third place in the most recent polling, behind a former mayor of Lima and a former president.

The three candidates are considered centrists in tight competition, with enthusiasm for the candidacy of radical ultranationalist Ollanta Humala, a foe of current President Alan Garcia, diminishing.

If elected, Fujimori would join a string of female leaders in Latin America. In recent years, women have been elected to presidencies in Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica. She'd also represent at least a nostalgic return to the presidency of her father.

Alberto Fujimori is serving 25 years in prison after being tried and convicted on charges of corruption and human-rights abuses during his decade in office, in which Fujimori made gains against the Shining Path guerrilla group but was convicted of ordering massacres led by death squads. Yet Fujimori also is credited with stabilizing Peru's economy, a point on which Keiko Fujimori hopes to gain political traction during her campaign.

Peru's economy has grown consistently over the last decade, but indigenous ethnic groups have not benefited enough from that growth, Fujimori told BusinessWeek.

"Indigenous Peruvians feel like outsiders too," said Fujimori, referring to her own minority status as a Peruvian of Japanese descent. "They hear the country is growing a lot, but they don't see the benefits in their community."

Keiko Fujimori holds a business master's degree from Columbia University in New York and has already campaigned among Peruvian Americans in New Jersey. She reportedly visits her father in prison for political advice. She served as first lady of Peru when she was 19, after her parents' divorce. In 2008, she suggested she would consider pardoning her father if elected president.

So far, at least one globally prominent fellow Peruvian is not supporting her candidacy. Mario Vargas Llosa, the author awarded the Nobel Prize in literature this year, said on Monday that a Keiko Fujimori presidency would be "catastophe," alluding to the legacy of her father, whom he calls a "dictator."

Watch video in Spanish here. Vargas Llosa lost his bid for the presidency of Peru in 1990 to a virtual unknown at the time -- Alberto Fujimori.

-- Daniel Hernandez in Mexico City

Photo: Presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori greets an indigenous woman while campaigning in Peru. Credit: Fuerza2011.com

 

Comments

[fperu]

Keiko is near to be new president of Peru, i hope she does a good job like her father.

[duped]

Peruvians ought to be ashamed of themselves for allowing foreiners to rule thier country? especially that crook fujimori...might as well annex peru to japan so they can wipeout the fishing industry there like every where else in south america? heck no wonder they wer so easily conquered by the spanish!

[Matteo]

I am deeply disappointed with the quality of reporting shown in this article. The author refers to all candidates (except Humala) as "centrists". However, except maybe for Toledo, hardly any Peruvian would consider Castañeda a centrist, not to mention Keiko.

Then he goes on by labeling Humala a "radical ultranationalist". What does that mean anyway? If you are calling the other candidates on a left-right scale -without much detail-, wouldn't it be more accurate to just say that Humala is a "leftist"?

Moreover, the author writes that Keiko was referring to her own status as a minority when speaking about the disadvantaged indigenous people. Most Japanese descendants are in the middle and high classes in Peru, so they could hardly be linked in that sense to the really disadvantaged "minorities" that compose the biggest ethnic share of the population.