Steve Levitsky, Harvard Professor in the Government Department and director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, discusses the upcoming June 6 Peruvian elections. It’s a hot contest between Keiko Fujimori on the right and Pedro Castillo on the left.
June:
Steve Levitsky is a professor of Government at Harvard University and the Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. He's also an expert on Peruvian politics. Welcome, Steve.
Steven Levitsky:
Thanks, June. It's great to be here.
June:
The second round of the Peruvian elections coming up on June 6th, many of the people who are listening are very familiar with Peruvian politics, but I'm sure there are others of our listeners who don't know anything. So could we begin from scratch by describing the candidates to us?
Steven Levitsky:
Well, the two candidates are very different, and I think from the perspective of many Peruvians quite problematic. On the one hand, we have Keiko Fujimori whose father Alberto Fujimori governed as an autocrat during the 1990s, but eventually went into exile, was extradited in prison for corruption and human rights violations, he's in prison today. But retained a fair amount of public support. And upon that support his followers and eventually his daughter built a political party.
Steven Levitsky:
So here is a fairly right-wing daughter of former autocrat. Her opponent is the outsider of all outsiders. Pedro Castillo is a left-leaning teacher and teacher's union leader from a fairly remote province of Cajamarca, who has never held elected office. In fact, he ran for mayor of his hometown population, 4,500 and lost, and then managed as the candidate of a small, pretty radical left-wing party to sneak into the second round.
Steven Levitsky:
Now, both of them, both Keiko Fujimori and Pedro Castillo are pretty authoritarian. And Pedro Castillo a pretty radical potentially authoritarian left. Both of them have what in the United States we would call high negative. They're very unpopular, but it was a very fragmented field, with 18 candidates. None of whom got more than 15% of the overall vote. And, both of them, despite being very unpopular, kind of snuck into the second round. So you have two very unpopular candidates against each other.
June:
Wow. That's fascinating. You were quoted on Twitter as saying "There are legitimate differences of opinion about who is the lesser evil. Pedro Castillo is not a Communist, nor does he represent the Communist Party. Keiko Fujimori is not a Democrat and does not even remotely represent Democracy." Can you explain what that comment means and why you felt the necessity to post that?
Steven Levitsky:
Sure. The Peruvian media establishment is quite united and quite conservative. And they have rallied it to a stunning degree behind Keiko Fujimori. And all the TV stations, the vast bulk of the newspapers, almost all the talking heads, all the pundits, particularly in Lima which is very anti-left have all rallied behind Keiko Fujimori. And the line of this campaign in favor of Keiko Fujimori has been that this is an election about Communism against Democracy. Almost as if we were in Eisenhower's U.S.
Steven Levitsky:
It's Communism against Democracy. Now, Pedro Castillo comes from the left. He's leftist. He is not a Communist. What he's proposing is not a state takeover of the economy or single party rule. There's nothing remotely Communist about it. And Keiko Fujimori again, she's right up center. She's for defending the free market model, but she's got a horrendous track record when it comes to Democracy. Not only her father, not only the party, but her. Her party had a majority in Congress between 2016, 2020 and spent that time trying to pack the courts and overthrow the government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski which she eventually did.
Steven Levitsky:
They engage in very reckless anti-institutional behavior, even since 2016. So this idea which is being sold to Limeños, in particular Peruvians, day after day after day by every freaking television station is that it's a battle of Communism against Democracy. These are both flawed candidates. Neither of them are committed Democrats. They are both threats and risks in different ways, but Castillo is not a Communist and Keiko Fujimori is not a Democrat.
June:
You invited Keiko Fujimori to Harvard a few years back. Was that a mistake? And what is your takeaway from your perspective of today about that visit?
Steven Levitsky:
Interesting to reflect. No, I don't think it was a mistake. I think it's really important in universities that we expose ourselves and our students to a variety of different political points of view. So I am a politically no fan of Keiko Fujimori but we've brought over the last decades to Harvard almost every leading figure in Peruvian politics. We brought Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, we brought [Alejandro Palero 00:06:17], we brought Verónika Mendoza on the left. We brought the [Julio Cáceres 00:06:20] in the center. We tried to bring in [Ollanta Humala 00:06:23] but he declined.
Steven Levitsky:
So there's sometimes a well a tendency to only invite to speak to people who we agree with. And I think that is a terrible mistake. Both in terms of keeping ourselves informed, but most importantly, teaching our students. And so to me, it's very important that we bring people of diverse ideological views to Harvard to speak.
Steven Levitsky:
Keiko Fujimori was at the time...it was just before the 2016 election campaign, but she was very likely to be a front runner. She had a good chance to win the presidency to be president. And so I thought it was very important that we have a sense of her view, her commitment for example to Democracy and other things. So I think meeting her, being able to question her, debate with her was a very important thing. Now she took a position here at Harvard. She tried to take advantage of her visit here, to reinvent herself a little bit as more centrist and more liberal. And it turned out, for reasons that I don't think we fully understand, to be more of a faint than a evolution. She went back to Peru and sort of pretty quickly moved back to the right.
Steven Levitsky:
Now. Some people think of this. In fact, I think the majority view is that she was kind of BS'ing us at Harvard and kind of putting on a false image where deep down she was really right-wing. I think it's actually a little more complicated than that. I think she thought very seriously about a more centrist turn and for a variety of reasons, it didn't work out. So she fell back on the right, but no, I don't regret it. And I learned a lot. I think the people who met with her and who attended her talk learned a lot.
Steven Levitsky:
And again, I think Harvard should invite a wide range of people. I personally draw the line at human rights violated. I would never invite somebody who had blood on her or his hand. But look we brought Correa. We've brought people on the left who were not fully committed to Democracy. We brought people on the right and we're not fully committed to Democracy. We've brought people who were implicated in corruption. If we only bring our friends or we only bring angels. We're not going to be able to bring many people.
June:
That's really true. Going back directly to the elections in the first round of these elections, there were many, many blank votes. What role do you think that blank votes are going to have in this election, and are the blank votes favoring one candidate or another?
Steven Levitsky:
That's a great question. We really don't know. Historically, it's very common in Peru that the two people making the runoff are pretty unpopular and not a lot of people respond in the first couple of weeks after the first round by saying, "oh God, they both are terrible. I'm going to vote blank or no, [inaudible 00:09:42]." And over time, Peruvians are quite sophisticated in figuring out who they think the [foreign language 00:09:53] the least bad candidate is.
Steven Levitsky:
And once they've reached that decision, once they decide, "okay, they both are awful. I spent two weeks denouncing how awful they were, but I realized one of them would be my president and this person is slightly less awful." And they decide to vote for that person. Many, Peruvians have gone through that process in the last few elections and that's happening already.
Steven Levitsky:
In fact, I would say a larger number of people who never, ever, ever thought they would ever vote for Keiko Fujimori, do not like Keiko Fujimori or consider themselves anti [foreign language 00:10:30] who look at Pedro Castillo. Maybe they were influenced by this Communism campaign in the media. Maybe they were influenced by the fact that Castillo is a really inexperienced, inapt candidate, but they reached a decision over the last few weeks that as much as they despise Keiko Fujimori they're going to vote her.
Steven Levitsky:
And so the number of blank and no ballot accorded polls is going down and mostly going into Keiko Fujimori camp. So she started the second round, maybe 15 points behind, and now it's nearly taut. So a lot of the people who three weeks ago said they were going to vote blank are now saying vote for Keiko Fujimori.
June:
I've heard that a lot of people in the middle class and upper middle class have said that they're voting for Castillo. Is that true? And...
Steven Levitsky:
What do you mean by a lot? The vast majority of people in the upper middle class say they're voting for Keiko Fujimori. It's something like three to one ratio, but there's some.
June:
My question in regards to that is, do you think this is in a kind of slight radicalization because of the protests that are going around the continent or is it just an anti Fujimori vote?
Steven Levitsky:
I think it is mostly an anti Fujimori vote. I think if we see a Fujimori government, we may well see Peru take on some characteristics of Chile and Columbia. I think we may see kind of broadly left of center contention, social protest, the likes of which we have not seen in Peru in a long time.
Steven Levitsky:
But for now the vast bulk of the votes for Castillo are coming from the interior of the country, from the south, from the central Highlands, from the poorest sectors in society. In addition, there is always in every country, a sort of middle-class progressive left. Those votes are going for Castillo but we're not seeing a very large number of well-off Peruvians sort of radicalizing like we'd see maybe in Chile.
June:
If Castillo elected, will he be able to govern, given that he's not going to have anything near a majority in Congress?
Steven Levitsky:
That's the big question. I think Castillo is going to be in some sense, a disaster, no matter what. There are three scenarios. One, he moderates dramatically and accommodates the majority in Congress and the private sector. He'll have the media against him. He'll have the courts against him. He'll have the private sector against them. He'll have the military against him. He'll have a majority in Congress against him, but what does he do? He could just sort of abandon all pretensions of radicalism, kind of like, Ollanta Humala did in 2011 and just sort of go with the flow and govern on the center, even center right.
Steven Levitsky:
That will cause a legitimacy crisis. He'll lose a lot of support. And it'll probably lead to even greater radicalism in among those who have been voting for a change. He could do the opposite of that. He could go for it and sort of follow the Chavista, Correa, Evo Morales strategy, maybe try to call a [inaudible 00:14:03] constitutional reform, try to mobilize people. And, there's certainly scenario which that could work out. And that's what people who were voting for even friends of mine who were voting for Keiko Fujimori are...that's why they're for Keiko. They're worried about him pulling off [a bull of Aryan project.00:14:19].
Steven Levitsky:
I cannot say to you that that is impossible. And it's not the cards, he might pull it off. More likely though is if he tries, he'd fail. He either gets overthrown in a military coup or he gets removed by Congress. Or there are large scale protests and he's kind of forced to resign. I think he does not have the skill, the experience or the political strength of an Evo Morales or a Hugo Chavez. And he doesn't have quite the crisis or the military support that Alberto Fujimori had in 1992. My guess is if he tries the radical strategy, he will fail, which means probably Castillo is faced with this sort of damned if he does damned if he doesn't situation. It's hard to perceive a successful Castillo government.
June:
Can you see a successful Fujimori government?
Steven Levitsky:
That depends what you mean by successful. I think Keiko Fujimori is the opposite of Castillo in the sense that she will have the media behind her. She'll have the private sector behind her. She doesn't have a majority in Congress, but there is a right wing coalition to be built in the Congress. And she's got a fair number of friends in the courts. And if she doesn't, she's going to be able to pack [inaudible 00:15:44] couple of years anyway.
Steven Levitsky:
So she's got the winds behind her, which means that she is more likely to be able to govern for five years to establish governability, to maintain the status quo, to maintain order. But I think this would be a pretty illiberal government. I think this would be a government with a sort of an Uribista flavor, very anti-left. It will come to power with a mandate of...remember this is Democracy, I'm putting up quotes with my hands (air quotes). Democracy against Communism.
Steven Levitsky:
She will have a mandate to go after the so-called Communists. And she has allies who have a very sort of law and order authoritarian attitude. And other allies who were sort of ideologically committed to this sort of Christian defensive family and assault on gay rights and gender rights.
Steven Levitsky:
I think you'd see the rights of social movements and of other vulnerable minorities pretty seriously threatened under [inaudible 00:16:54]. I think this would be a kind of Uribe style democradura that would also be very costly in terms of democratic institutions. So she might succeed from her own standpoint. I think she's less likely to end up in the street overthrown, but I think it would be very costly for Democracy.
June:
You've mentioned a couple of times the armed forces what's been the role of the armed forces in this election?
Steven Levitsky:
Well, it's not entirely clear. The armed forces were pretty quiet in Peru for a couple of decades after they were really deeply implicated in the corruption of the Fujimori era. And after Fujimori's fall the military really adopted a low profile for a good 15 years. But in recent years, as politics has gotten more fragmented and more unstable, weak politicians have turned to the military for support.
Steven Levitsky:
[Martine de Scada 00:17:59] had no political party. He was a vulnerable president. Congress was trying to bring him down and the first effort to remove him, he actively mobilized the military and had [a photo op 00:18:12] surrounded by the military command in an effort to legitimize themselves. That is not a healthy use of the military. That is an effect, a Democratic politician running to the barracks door for help.
Steven Levitsky:
When the first time that Congress tried to remove [de Scada, 00:18:28], the president of Congress called the military command and tried to get the military on board. That is not a Democratic appeal to the military. That's knocking on the barrack's door. There is concern. There had been some interventions, mostly by former military persons, not military persons. But former military officials and organizations of former military officials have been at...just a few days ago wrote a letter late at night to president [Sagasti 00:18:58] it looked like it was written in 1972, talking about chaos and making sort of allusions to subversion.
Steven Levitsky:
It could have been written in Uruguay in the early '70s or Argentina in the early '70s. And I found it very frightening. Now that doesn't mean that the military is ready to intervene, but there is now a sort of specter of military intervention in Peru that did not exist five years ago.
June:
In Peru there's something called [foreign language 00:19:34], which I think translates loosely as the removal of a president if they're not performing up to par.
June:
How do you see that as figuring into the way the newly elected president will act?
June:
Could it provide a moderating force, both in terms of authoritarian behavior or in terms of leftist behavior?
Steven Levitsky:
Well, it can do one of two things unfortunately, so the [foreign language 00:20:16] is the ability of Congress to remove the president really on almost any grounds. They call it a moral incapacity. Nobody knows what moral incapacity means. So you can remove someone based on more or less anything. And unfortunately any removal of institution of impeachment or removal of a president in a democracy has to be used with great restrain.
Steven Levitsky:
You have to be really careful about before you break the glass and use that tool. This is an elected president and Congress removing an elected president is a very big deal it is a [B-F-D 00:20:59]. And unfortunately in Peru, it has been kind of normalized and people...they broke the glass and now they're just reaching in without even fixing the glass.
Steven Levitsky:
They tried to use it four times in the last presidential term and they've used successfully twice. So now it's very much in play. It's right out there on the table, and that can have two effects. It can have a positive effect in the sense that you suggest you in which Fujimori or Castillo will be aware of that, afraid of that and behave himself accordingly.
Steven Levitsky:
But there's another scenario. And this happened in 1992 in Peru, which is if the president is backed into a corner and fears that the Congress is about to remove him, he may pull out all the stops and try to close [inaudible 00:21:57]. And that is exactly what happened with Fujimori in 1992. And it can be...the institution of a concierge can check the president, but it can also threaten the president. In that sense could provoke an even wider and more damaging political war.
June:
I'm not a follower close up of Peruvian politics. But it seems to me that Peru has been unusual in the last decades because the issues of the economy are separated from the issues of politics. And I'm wondering if you feel, or if there are any indications, especially after the COVID crisis with the COVID crisis that, that's no longer the case.
Steven Levitsky:
I think there are indications. The strange thing about Peru in between 2002, 2003 and 2016 was that Peru's economy was booming. It was just booming by macro economic standards. President Alejandro Toledo, President Alan García. And to some extent, President Ollanta Humala did really well. They governed over steady high levels of economic growth. And yet all three of them were unpopular. So Toledo [inaudible 00:23:30] single digits, García has hovered in the 20s throughout his presidency, despite 8% economic growth. And Humala is also descended into the 20s and 30s despite pretty high economic growth.
Steven Levitsky:
So the separation was usually almost everywhere in the United States and other countries. When the economy is booming, the president does pretty well. In Peru the economy boom, and the president is pretty crap. People were judging the presidents for other things: corruption, poor performance of the state, the fact that presidents never kept their campaign promises. They said one thing in the campaign and did another.
Steven Levitsky:
Peruvians did not trust and did not like their politicians despite the economic growth. So what's happened in the last few years, even before COVID, but especially with COVID, the economy is a disaster. All of Latin America suffered an economic decline over the last year and a half. Peru's is among the worst in Latin America. Terrible contraction of its GDP. So governments, politicians, presidents were unpopular to begin with even when the economy was growing.
Steven Levitsky:
Now, the economy is collapsing. We don't know how low politicians are going to fall. But we got one indicator in this last election. When a candidate nobody had ever heard of, or very few people had heard of, who'd never held elected office came in first place in the first round of the presidential election. For there is a lot of discontent in Peru.
Steven Levitsky:
If Castillo wins this election, despite the fact that all of Lima's establishment, all of the media, all the main political parties are behind Keiko Fujimori. If Castillo wins, this agriculturalist from a small town in Casa Marca, who no one knows, who has no experience, who is obviously inept in terms of political skills. If he wins, that's a sign of massive public discontent. And so Peruvians were discontent with their politicians while the economy was good. And now the economy [inaudible 00:25:55].
June:
Some people have talked about this election as being between the urban and the rural in the disenfranchised, rural in Peru. Do you see it that way? And what comments do you have about that?
Steven Levitsky:
I haven't been to Peru in the last couple of years and I have never met Pedro Castillo. I don't know his political party. I don't know the people around him and I haven't studied in granular detail the surveys well enough to know the real base and support. So at some level, yes, there's no question that the overwhelming support that rural areas, that so-called marginalized or forgotten rural areas are overwhelming for Castillo.
Steven Levitsky:
Whereas urban areas in particular, well-off urban areas reasonable off urban areas ar overwhelmingly for Keiko Fujimori. That is true, but there's been a lot of economic growth in rural areas in recent years to cast Lima as booming and the periphery of the country as somehow stuck in the 1960s. It's just not true.
Steven Levitsky:
Rural Peru is also boomed in the last few decades. It's boomed more in the towns, more in some areas than others, more in the towns than in other areas. But there aren't enough Peruvians who've been left behind entirely to get Castillo elected president. There's more than just the rural left behind. If people are...more people are angry than just the rural poor. And I think the Pedro Castillo is such a new phenomenon that we just don't really yet know enough about the support.
June:
What does the outcome of this election mean for the region?
Steven Levitsky:
It probably doesn't it mean very much. Peru often kind of follows its own path in terms of regional trends. Like when, when Latin America or South America experienced a wave of right-wing military coups in the 1960s and early '70s who suffered a or experienced the left-wing military coup. When all the region democratized in the 1990s Peru fell back into authoritarianism.
Steven Levitsky:
When all the region had a left-turn in the first decade of the 21st century Peru did not. So Peru is rarely sort of symptomatic of the rest of the region. I think if Keiko wins...there was talk a few years ago about a regional turn to the right. That's really not happening. There haven't been other [Bolsonaro's 00:29:07], [inaudible 00:29:07] in Columbia is failing miserably. The right in Chile is failing miserably. The right in Argentina was knocked out a power after one term.
Steven Levitsky:
So I don't think it means a resurgence of the right necessarily, although we do see a march from a more liberal center right. The Macris, and the Piñeras and the [Santoses 00:29:33], to the Uribismos, and the [inaudible 00:29:38] and the Bolsonaros and the Fujimoris. So this is maybe one step further toward a more illiberal, right.
Steven Levitsky:
If Castillo wins, the left will cheer, but the left is not necessarily exactly making resurgence in the region either. And to the extent that it is like in Chile, it is very fragmented, very ill-defined. So I don't think this is going to be a sort of part of a wave in either direction. I do think though that unfortunately under either government Peru's fragile, Democratic institutions are going to be at risk.
June:
Would you care to elaborate on that?
Steven Levitsky:
Neither of these two candidates nor the people surrounding them or the major forces supporting them are committed to liberal Democratic institutions. Keiko Fujimori continues to be surrounded by elements that were either supporters of her father's authoritarian regime, members of her father's authoritarian regime, part of the political party that spent four years trying to destroy the presidency of [Byczynski 00:30:47] between 2016 and 2020.
Steven Levitsky:
It's difficult to find committed liberal Democrats among the [inaudible 00:30:55]. Pedro Castillo is a classic sort of 1970s, [inaudible 00:31:00]. It's all about [foreign language 00:31:03], whatever the people says, super [inaudible 00:31:09]. I have seen very few liberal instincts in him in the sense of protecting the rights of free press, individual rights, human rights, the right to consent, the right to protest.
Steven Levitsky:
This is not to say he's going to be Fidel Castro incarnated but as we learned in the United States, if you elect as president somebody who's not committed to liberal Democracy, and I think it's safe to say neither Keiko Fujimori nor Pedro Castillo is committed to liberal Democracy.
Steven Levitsky:
Then you're putting your institutions at risk. Is it a guarantee that Democracy will die? No, of course not but it introduces an element of risk. And I think that the risk with Castillo actually, I would say both in both cases. There's the risk that Castillo does something damaging to Democratic institution. There's also a great risk that Castillo will provoke a coupe that his opponent will damage Democratic institutions as occurred with Fernando Lugo in, [Paraguay 00:32:13] for example, with Keiko Fujimori I think there's a risk that she will threatened Democratic institutions.
Steven Levitsky:
I think there's also a risk under Keiko Fujimori that you'll see, as I mentioned earlier, possibly a really widespread reaction against her. Potentially a level of social mobilization that we haven't seen in Peru in a long time that would bring through a little closer to Columbia and Chile. And as in Columbia and Chile that can also lead to at least a governability crisis. If not a level of violence, that's very costly to Democracy.
June:
I know this isn't a horse race, but would you care to bet on what's going to happen?
Steven Levitsky:
I have been wrong so many times [inaudible 00:33:03] Peruvian elections that yeah it would be silly of me to try.
June:
I invite you to be wrong once more.
Steven Levitsky:
I had thought after the first round, before I saw the poll that the Peruvian election has been fairly conservative for the last 25 or 30 years for very good reason. Peru suffered a crisis in the late 1980s, 1990s to the likes of which most of us can't even imagine. And the combination of a bloody [inaudible 00:33:42] insurgency and hyperinflation and economic collapse.
Steven Levitsky:
So the stability and economic improvements that Peru has achieved over the last generation and a half now is nothing to be scoffed at. And it's understandable that Peruvians, particularly middle-class Peruvians, particularly coastal Peruvians feel they have a lot to lose today.If you compare it to say 1990.
Steven Levitsky:
And so my expectation was that at the end of the day, more Peruvians would choose what they perceive to be a safer, more status quo oriented option, Keiko Fujimori then Pedro Castillo. I expected the Keiko would lead in the polls. I was wrong. Castillo is ahead in the polls. It's tightened. And I think if I had to bet a sol or a dollar, I would put it on Keiko Fujimori which means that all of you who are out there listening, should probably place your money on the other side as I am often wrong. And that's [inaudible 00:34:44].
June:
Thank you very much. Steve. We've been listening to Steve Levitsky the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American studies and a professor at the Government Department at Harvard. Thank you, Steve.
Steven Levitsky:
Thank you June it's been a lot of fun.