LIMA, Peru – An anti-establishment military man who promises to redistribute Peru’s wealth won the most votes in Sunday’s presidential vote and is headed into a runoff against the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori, unofficial results showed.

Keiko Fujimori, 35, could easily become president, since none of former Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala’s leading rivals eliminated in the vote expressed a similar intent of shaking up the free market-oriented status quo.

Humala similarly won the first round in the 2006 presidential vote but was defeated 53 percent to 47 percent by Alan Garcia in a runoff.

Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has called a runoff between Humala and Keiko Fujimori “a choice between AIDS and terminal cancer,” given perceptions of their anti-democratic tendencies.

Unofficial results representing 74 percent of the vote released by the nonprofit electoral watchdog Transparencia gave Humala 31.3 percent in Sunday’s election, well short of the simple majority needed to win outright.

Keiko Fujimori — whose father Peruvians alternately adore and vilify — got 23.2 percent, trailed by Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a 72-year-old former World Bank economist and investment banker, with 18.7 percent.

In fourth was Alejandro Toledo, Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006, with 15.9 percent. Pre-election polls showed he would defeat Humala in a second round, while Kuczynski and Fujimori would have a harder time.

Humala has spooked foreign investors by promising a greater state role in the economy and to divert natural gas exports to the domestic market.

Politics in this resource-rich Andean nation have been volatile since the 1980s, when its discredited political parties all but dissolved.

George Mason University political scientist Jo-Marie Burt said Sunday’s outcome put Peru on “a really terrible road, and I think it shows how weak the whole political system really is.”

“The people are very divided,” said Luis Tamayo, 25, an engineering student.

 

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