00:08Deep into the relevance of Peru's election, we invite Dr. Yvonne Tellez, international law expert.
00:15Hello Yvonne, welcome once more to From the South.
00:19Thank you Alejandra for having me today.
00:21Well, Peru is arriving to this runoff election after a decade that has been marked by political instability in the
00:30nation and also by the succession of several presidents in these ten years.
00:37And I wanted to ask you, how does this political landscape is affecting the confidence of the people in the
00:44democratic institutions of the nation and also how this uncertainty is going to be reflected in today's outcome?
00:53I think that we have to see this election not just as a political competition, but I think as like
01:04as a test of the institutionality of Peru.
01:08As you were saying before, this will be the ninth president in almost ten years.
01:16So I think this is like a kind of a referendum on a decade of political instability and institutional erosion.
01:29We've seen that this this this this to be elected as ninth president in this in over a decade shows
01:38us that is one of the few democracies, at least, for example, in the region that have experienced this level
01:48of of executive turnovers without suffering a complete institutional breakdown.
01:55So this is completely very particular to Peru.
02:00I think that we have to take into account that Peru has gone through successive impeachments, corruption, scandals, presidential resignations
02:14and a lot of congressional confrontations.
02:17So I think all the all of these has generated citizen fatigue and a very profound distrust towards produce political
02:31institution.
02:31So I think that even that this whole election reflects completely fragmentation because we have I mean, Peru's had more
02:43than 30 candidates competing and none of these of these candidates secured even at least one fifth of the vote.
02:55So Keiko Fujimuri advanced just with a little bit more.
02:59So Keiko Fujimuri advanced just with a little bit more, that's almost 17 percent, Sanchez with a 12 percent.
03:03But I think this runoff emerged not of a broad political, a popular consensus, but from a very extremely fatigued
03:15and fragmented population, a fragmented electorate.
03:19So I think that Peruvians today are not choosing or were not choosing between just competing candidates or competing visions
03:30of the future.
03:31But I think that what they were trying to do was to identify the less risky option.
03:40Also, I want to ask you, what is the stake today for Peruvians, but most particularly for those that are
03:48most vulnerable where we are talking about the working class, also the rural communities and historically excluded sectors of the
03:58population?
04:00Well, we know that there is a very important divide, right, a territorial divide between Lima and the regions of
04:09Peru.
04:10There's the country is divided across several dimensions and all of these simultaneously.
04:18So I think that in the very deep situation of Peru, there's a crisis of representation.
04:27And that's regarding this territorial divide.
04:31And I think this remains unresolved because in this case, if Keiko Fujimuri ends up winning as we're seeing how
04:41the elections are coming out,
04:43that means that this crisis and this crisis of representation will remain unresolved.
04:50Because we know that in Peru, there was the privilege and very small sectors, economic sectors I'm talking about,
04:59they have benefited from Peru's export-oriented model of economy.
05:05And we have on the other side, the other group or the other groups that remain completely excluded from this
05:15economic dynamic.
05:17So I think that under Sanchez flag, what probably the voters were trying to look at a deeper structural reform.
05:28On the other side, the voters of Keiko were prioritizing institutional stability.
05:37So I think that we're seeing here is that Peru is not just, as I said before, not just reflecting
05:46this ideological polarization,
05:48but I think it has also to do with competing understanding of what Peru's core problem is about.
05:57So I think that we're going to see not very profound changes regarding its structure, its political and social structure.
06:07And I think that we're going to see is just a stronger scope on Keiko's tendency to bring.
06:21First of all, there's like pragmatic governance scenarios.
06:26She's probably going to build coalitions, reassure investors and improve security.
06:33Also, I think that we're going to see a Peru that it's like it's going to turn into a very
06:42securitization scenario.
06:44And I think that despite all this, the continued instability will remain because the underlying structural problems like weak parties,
06:58the fragmented institutions, corruption, poverty, deep territorial inequalities, this will remain a result.
07:08And also putting the scope in the wider regional picture, what's the influence that today's outcome is going to have
07:18in the Latin American region?
07:21Okay, well, I think that from a regional perspective, we're going to see this reinforcement of this regional tendency in
07:31Latin America,
07:32this Latin American trend in which security concerns and security issues are the ones that are dominating this political competition.
07:45This one and political competition in general across the region.
07:50So I think that voters in Latin America are becoming less concerned with this traditional ideological debates.
08:00And they are more concerned about public order, organized crime, migration and economic stability.
08:09And we've seen this in Ecuador, Argentina, El Salvador.
08:15Now we're seeing this increasing in Colombia.
08:17So I think that what we're looking at is a region that is not turning uniformly to the right, but
08:29it is a tendency to turn into the right.
08:33Because it's like, I think this reflects like a growing certainty that, and centrality, I'm sorry, centrality, that security is
08:44the defining political issue of the decade.
08:47So I think that this, for the neighboring countries, this trajectory in Peru's elections and political issues, sits like in
08:59an intersection of drug trafficking routes, illegal mining networks, migration flows, and Pacific trade corridors.
09:07So if we see these aspects, we're going to see that those are the same aspects, the same aspects that
09:16are present in Ecuador, in Colombia's discussion, and even in Chile as well.
09:22So I think that this political instability or a probable slow and very, very small stability will have implications far
09:41beyond its borders.
09:43Thank you. Thank you very much, Yvonne, for your analysis in this such an important day for Peruvians, but also
09:49for Latin America as a whole, as you were informing.
09:52Thank you, Alejandra, for the invitation.
09:54We were speaking at this moment to Yvonne Tellez in the context of the general elections that are taking place
10:00in Peru.
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