Pedro Castillo proclaimed President-elect of Peru


Pedro Castillo is the president-elect of Peru, officials said on Monday, after attesting to his victory in the June 6 elections.

It was a narrow victory, with Castillo, a 51-year-old far-left labor activist and leader of the Free Peru Party, securing 50.1% of the vote, and right-wing MP Keiko Fujimori, daughter of authoritarian former president Alberto. Fujimori, obtaining 49.9% of the vote. Castillo will take office on July 28.

A former teacher in the rural Andes, Castillo has no experience as an elected official. Castillo has promised that if elected he will revise the Peruvian constitution, which worries the political establishment. Cynthia McClintock of George Washington University, specialist in Peru, Told The Wall Street Journal that Castillo is “quite isolated” and “is going to have a very difficult course”. Castillo said he would do nothing to undermine Peru’s fiscal stability and asked central bank governor Julio Velarde to stay.

Peru has been rocked by corruption scandals and hit incredibly hard by COVID-19 – it has the world’s highest per capita virus death rate, the Newspaper reports, and the pandemic has plunged about 10 percent of the population back into poverty.