MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Keiko Fujimori with minimum lead over Humala in Peru presidential run-off

A bruising campaign exposed sins from the recent past of Keiko and Humala

Conservative Keiko Fujimori is two percentage points ahead of nationalist Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential runoff next Sunday June 5, according to the latest opinion polls, but the difference is too tight to anticipate a clear winner.

A survey firm Ipsos showed Ms Fujimori gaining the presidency 51% of the vote against Humala’s 49%. A previous poll this week by Ipsos showed Fujimori with a 1 point lead. The latest poll has a margin of error of 1.8 percentage points, meaning the two candidates are still in a technical tie before Sunday's election.

The daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, Keiko faces the former Army commander Humala after a bruising campaign that has been bombarded with more references to past sins than to future plans for Peru's young democracy and growing economy boosted by the exploitation of natural resources.

Ollanta Humala is a career military man who has moderated his anti-capitalist views since narrowly losing the 2006 election. The tough race has tightened as Humala attacks Fujimori for having worked in the government of her father, Alberto Fujimori, who shut down Congress to consolidate power in 1992.

Firing back, the younger Fujimori has warned that Humala might roll back free-market reforms first implemented by her father that contributed to an unprecedented economic surge over the past decade after years of chaos and guerrilla wars. Humala has also admitted to having violated human rights as a military commander during the long Peruvian fight to eliminate the notorious Maoist inspired Shinning Path guerrilla movement that killed thousands and cost billions of dollars.

To woo undecided voters in a run-off that has polarized the country, Fujimori has apologized for her father's excesses, while Humala has vowed to prudently manage the economy and respect foreign investors who plan to pour 40 billion USD into mining and oil projects in Peru over the next decade.

Humala, who led an unsuccessful revolt in 2000 to demand the elder Fujimori step down, was the leading vote-getter in the first round of the election on April 10, appealing to the one third of mostly rural Peruvians still mired in poverty. Fujimori, who is popular among the urban poor and women, squeaked through to the second round when three other candidates splintered the centrist vote.

Humala, 48, has taken to wearing ties, carrying rosary beads and emulating the conciliatory style of centre-left leaders like Brazil's former President Lula da Silva. But critics say Humala has not abandoned the hard-line ideology instilled in him by his father, a prominent radical. They warn he would take over private firms and change the constitution to allow him to run for consecutive terms like his one-time political mentor, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Those warnings have scared some Peruvians, who are enjoying growing wealth and remain haunted by the destabilizing hyperinflation and insurgencies of the 1980s and 1990s.The elder Fujimori is credited with stabilizing the economy and defeating Marxist Shinning Path rebels, but his use of death squads against suspected leftists and widespread corruption saw him sent to prison for 25 years after he fled Peru in 2000.

Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, an outspoken conservative, has endorsed Humala, saying that the younger Fujimori lacks democratic credentials and depends on aides who served under her father. She has known some of them since she was 19 and was appointed Peru's first lady after her parents separated. Furthermore he alleges that Keiko’s campaign is being conducted by the former president from jail.

Nevertheless whoever wins will not have a majority in the one chamber congress and will be forced to work voting alliances with lawmakers representing the three centre candidates. Humala has 47 seats; Keiko, 37; the three centrist parties total 42 and 4 independent.