Candidates with Jewish, Israel ties come 3rd, 4th in Peru
Humala and Fujimori are expected to take part in a runoff race for the presidency on June 5.
By GIL STERN STERN SHEFLERPeruvian Alejandro Toledo 311 (R)(photo credit: Reuters/Enrique Castro-Mendivil)
Ollanta Humala, a leftist populist, and Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of imprisoned former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, came first and second, respectively, in the first round of the elections for the presidency in Peru, according to unofficial, initial results announced on Monday.Humala and Fujimori are expected to take part in a runoff race for the presidency on June 5.Two candidates with ties to Judaism and Israel came in third and fourth place. Pablo Pedro Kuczynski, the son of a Jewish physician who fled Nazi Germany, won 18 percent of the vote while former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo, who is married to a Belgian-born Jew and is a close friend of Israel’s, was fourth with 15% of the electorate.Upon hearing the election results, Peruvian author 2010 Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, himself a former presidential hopeful, likened voting for either Fujimori or Humala as having to pick between “AIDS and terminal cancer.”Meanwhile, both Humala and Fujimori were seen as trying to occupy the middle ground. Humala distanced himself from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an ideological ally whose outspoken support cost him votes in the last election. Fujimori, in turn, promised to respect human rights if elected, although she has avoided saying whether she will pardon her father, who is serving 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government’s battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s.
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