FAR-LEFT BET LEADS PERU PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Far-left activist and teacher Pedro Castillo has beaten expectations and come out in front of 17 other hopefuls vying for Peru's presidency in an election at the weekend, Denis Duettmann reported for Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa).

The candidate of the Peru Libre party received 16.3 percent of the votes, with more than half the ballots counted in the Andean country’s first-round poll, the electoral authority said on Monday. But he did not win outright, setting the stage for a run-off vote in June between the top two vote-getters.

Behind Castillo were conservative economist Hernando de Soto, with 13.4 per cent, and former conservative congressperson Keiko Fujimori, with 12.9 percent. Fujimori is the daughter of controversial ex-president Alberto Fujimori, who served time in jail for human rights abuses.

Castillo is from Chota province in the north of the country and had led a teachers' strike in 2017.

At the time, the government accused him of links to sympathizers of the leftist rebel group Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso.) Castillo said that, if he won the election, he would work to establish a socialist state, give the government more power over the media, and abolish the constitutional court.

During the election campaign, he also promoted the restructuring of the pension system and the nationalization of the gas industry.

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