Keiko Fujimori’s victory in the first round of the presidential poll in Peru and the relegation of leftist candidate Veronika Mendoza to third place means that the former is set to face right- wing candidate Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the final run-off on June 5. Ms. Fujimori’s father Alberto had ruled Peru in the 1990s, his reign known for repressive measures against the political opposition. Ms. Fujimori has promised a break from her father’s notorious past while seeking to resuscitate his right-wing populism, if elected to power to succeed former President Ollanta Humala. The run-off between Ms. Fujimori and Mr. Kuczynski is yet another setback for the left in Latin America after years of political ascendancy in the 2000s, marking what was termed the “rise of the pink tide” in the continent. The socialist regime in Venezuela lost a parliamentary election against the centre-right opposition; the Peronists led by Cristina Fernández had to relinquish power to right-wing forces in Argentina last year; and Evo Morales, possibly the most popular Latin American leader, lost a referendum on whether he could retain power for a fourth term in Bolivia. Meanwhile, impeachment proceedings have already begun against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, following street protests against corruption involving the Workers’ Party-led government.
In the early 2000s, a series of mass mobilisations and upsurges gave rise to either new leftists (the Bolivarian socialists in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia), or social democratic regimes (the Workers’ Party in Brazil) or populist governments (Argentina under the Kirchners). These were a reaction to a social and economic environment controlled by elites who undertook skewed economic policies, exacerbating economic inequality and poverty. The loss of popularity for the left has country-specific reasons, but the common current has been the inability of regimes to go beyond statism or dependence on welfarism fuelled by natural resource extraction and related commodity production. This is especially seen in the difficulty the Bolivarian regime in Venezuela faces in weaning the country away from its dependence on petroleum extraction, and the malfeasance in Brazil in the running of its natural resources sector. Demand shortfalls in the global market have resulted in export downturns and a crisis in the oil sector which in Venezuela have led to macroeconomic problems. The charisma of leaders such as the late Hugo Chávez and Lula da Silva may have helped their regimes garner support from varied segments of society, but their successors have been unable to match their popularity or political cunning. In the face of the reverses suffered by the left-leaning regimes and the growing influence of the centre-right, the former need to make an honest re-evaluation of the efficacy of their strategies and their record in power. Any recalibration in their strategy must be based on policies that are neither shaped nor overly dependent on a commodity boom, leave alone individual charisma.
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