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Peru Votes for a New President

   VOA News  April 10, 2011
   Peru's presidential candidate Ollanta Humala casts his ballot in Lima,
   April 10, 2011

Photo: Reuters

   Peru's presidential candidate Ollanta Humala casts his ballot in Lima,
   April 10, 2011

   Voters in Peru are casting ballots Sunday for a new president, in a
   tight race likely to generate a runoff election between the two
   candidates who win the most votes.
   Polls show the candidate likely to earn the most votes is the left-wing
   nationalist Ollanta Humala. But the latest predictions show him winning
   only about a quarter of the votes, well short of the 50 percent he
   needs to win outright. Humala, a former soldier, has been in this
   position before. In 2006, he won in the first round only to lose to
   President Alan Garcia in the second round.
   This time, analysts say, there are three candidates who could earn the
   other spot in a June runoff vote.
   Conservative Keiko Fujimori, daughter of jailed former president
   Alberto Fujimori, is right behind Humala, with about 21 percent of the
   vote. She benefits from die-hard supporters of her father, who was
   convicted of human rights abuses, but also is remembered for battling a
   long-running insurgency and curbing hyperinflation in the 1990s.
   Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former prime minister and banker, got a boost
   Saturday when the ruling party threw its support behind him. The ARPA
   party, which is not running a candidate, said Kuczynski has "democratic
   convictions."
   Former president Alejandro Toledo has slipped in the polls, even though
   he held the lead early on in the campaign.
   Peru has seen a decade of rapid economic growth, but a third of its
   population still lives in poverty. Much of the campaign has focused on
   continuing this growth while ensuring the poor also see some of the
   increased prosperity.

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