Peru holds presidential election amid a decade of political tumult

Lima, Peru – On Tuesday, from a balcony in Lima's historic San Martin Square, Ricardo Belmont — who, at 80, is Peru's oldest presidential hopeful — closed his campaign with a message to his supporters. It was time, he told the crowd, to kick out the corruption that has gripped Peru over the past decade. "We are no longer a nation.

We are just surrogates for these corrupt parties," said Belmont, a conservative who served as mayor of Lima in the early 1990s. Though initially lesser-known, Belmont has, in recent days, emerged as one of several viable candidates to make the run-off. As voters head to the polls this Sunday for the first round of Peru's presidential election, many candidates, like Belmont, are pledging a break from the tumult that has dominated the country's politics.

In the past decade, nine presidents have passed through the government palace, some only lasting a few months. Only one has completed a full term. Nearly all have either been imprisoned or involved in criminal investigations, largely related to corruption.

Peruvians have also grown so accustomed to a revolving door of presidents that experts fear it has contributed to an unprecedented level of volatility in this year's election cycle, not to mention voter apathy. "We have voters who are frustrated. We have voters who are tired.

We have voters who are apathetic," said Fernando Tuesta, a political scientist at Peru's Pontifical Catholic University and a former chief of the national elections authority. He described many voters as sceptical, "approaching this electoral process without enthusiasm". The fractures, corruption and infighting in Peru's politics have resulted in a record list of 35 presidential candidates, many of whom are unknown to most voters.

From this crowded field, two presidential hopefuls are expected to advance to a run-off election in June. Voting is mandatory in the country of 34 million people, but pollsters still expect a high number of blank ballots. In a country where "outsider" candidates emerge rapidly and fall dramatically, predictions about Sunday's outcome are changing daily.