Keiko Fujimori is running for President of Peru under a shadow that will never dissipate: her father. He is at once an important reason for the viability of her candidacy as well as a cautionary tale, the lessons of which she must insist she has learned.
Alberto Fujimori was President of Peru from 1990 to 2000 and was credited with, among other things, the revival of the economy and the brutal suppression of the leftist uprising that made the country a byword for terror in Latin America. As a result, the elder Fujimori is now sitting in prison, a cozy one by most standards, indeed built specifically for him, but a penitentiary nevertheless. While his case is still under appeal, he could be in jail for a quarter century.
Keiko Fujimori has spent the last couple of months trying to dispel the impression that she is merely a stand-in for her father. “They are trying to say that my father is influencing the campaign, but it’s not true,” she says. “He is in prison. I make the decisions, I picked the campaign team and wrote the government plan, I am here talking to Peruvians, not my father.” She is adamant. “If my opponents want to think otherwise, they have underestimated me. Let them continue thinking that way.”
If she does win the June 5 run-off against her left-wing opponent Ollanta Humala, she will become the country’s first female president, Peru’s youngest head of state, if only by just two days , and the first child of a president to be elected to the same office. She will also be the first woman of Asian descent to rule a nation in the Americas, as well as the first person with an MBA to govern Peru, having graduated from Columbia University in 2006. And while the past two presidents have also had foreign-born spouses, she will be the first with a US-born First Gentleman, Mark Villanella, a Jersey boy.
So far, she can claim virtually dramatic turnaround in her campaign. Going into the first round of voting in April, her support fluctuated around 20%, which most opponents and pundits attributed to the core support for her father. Part of that support was due to an original pledge to free her father. She has since stepped back from that, though partisans are still believe she may alleviate his imprisonment if elected.
