Last Sunday were Peru's presidential elections. With escalating intensity the past couple of months, political conversations everywhere you went, and the ubiquitous billboards, flyers, and creative range of campaign paraphernalia looking down on Peru, the five-year time frame to choose the country's new leader finally arrived on April 10. I actually spent it going with my friend Karina to vote.
In Peru, voting is mandatory, and you have to vote wherever you are registered. So, many people have to travel to their hometown to vote, or else pay a federal fine or multa. Some people actually choose to pay the fine, as it's cheaper than transportation expenses, but a lot of people just never change their residency and use the elections as a chance for a little family reunion. Karina is from Casa Grande, a small town almost an hour outside of Trujillo, so it wasn't a big deal to join the crowd of people taking public transportation to surrounding towns to cast their votes.
After an early church service (official meetings are prohibited between 9 and 4 on election day), we caught a couple of seats on a crowded combi and rode to Casa Grande. It was a cool experience. Of course, the actual voting wasn't too exciting. We went to the school where her voting group was assigned, and she joined the hundreds of other people milling around with telltale ink-stained fingers, marking them as having left their huella, fingerprint and performed their civic duty, casting their vote for Alan Garcia's replacement.
We were only there for the afternoon, but it was fun being in the small-town environment, seeing the places important to Karina, meeting several old friends on the street, as happens in a small town. We went by her dad's parents' house and ate a late lunch with them and her aunt, who directs a kindergarten on the second floor of their home.
Then we went to her house. It was definitely cool to see the place where she grew up, but it was hard, too. Karina's granddad - more like her father, really - died in a tragic accident at the end of January, and it was the first time she'd been back to the house where her grandparents raised her. Another step in the grieving process. Most of her mom's family was there, and seeing everyone without her grandfather was tough. But I appreciated her welcoming me in, showing me the green bike he always rode, his room, his carpenter's workshop, and the cabinets, chairs, benches, and wardrobes he'd made. He'd left his tangible marks all over the house, and his prints of love and care were obviously still very evident in the hearts of each of his family members there.
In the end, of the five main candidates (five out of about 12 total), Ollanta Humala received the most votes, followed by Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of Peru's president in the early 1990s. However, neither received the 50% majority required to win, so there will be a run-off - segunda vuelta - on June 5. Most people I know were supporting one of the other three candidates (PPK, Toledo, Castañeda) and are pretty worried about the results. Ollanta, a former military officer, is pretty extreme leftist and, although his campaign this time was toned down from his in 2006, many are worried that his sympathies for Hugo Chavez-like politics will be a dangerous turn for Peru if he wins. However, his large support base does show that there is still a huge percent of the Peruvian population that wants a change, is tired of corruption, and feels marginalized. So, something's got to give... but I don't know if this guy's the right one to bring a stable kind of change to Peru.
We'll see, I guess. Only God knows what June 5th will reveal and what mark Peru's new leader is going to leave.
Well put. Way better than my explanation of the election process I did on my blog. Will have to redirect all my readers to you! See you soon
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