Castillo and Fujimori agree to hold two debates before Peru’s second round of elections

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Peru Libre and Fuerza Popular parties agreed this Wednesday to participate in two debates organized by the National Jury of Elections (JNE) given the second round of elections in Peru, which will face presidential candidates Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori on June 6.

The JNE informed, in a message published on Twitter, that the legal representatives and representatives of both political groups attended this morning a meeting called by the electoral body and reached a consensus to hold two debates, the details of which will be defined next Friday in another meeting.

The agreement between Perú Libre and Fuerza Popular was reached after three failed attempts, which showed the parties’ discrepancies with the JNE’s initial proposal to call four debates before the presidential runoff: two between Castillo and Fujimori, one of the technical teams and another of vice-presidents.

According to what Peru Libre’s press team announced on the social networks, finally, a debate in Lima and another one in the provinces was defined. The presidential candidates and their technical teams will measure their strength.

PARALLEL DEBATES

Castillo and Fujimori already faced each other on May 1 in a street and improvised duel that went down in Peruvian history for being the second presidential debate held outside Lima and the first in a rural area.

The meeting, organized in record time and parallel to the debates to be held by the JNE, was held in the northern city of Chota, the homeland of the candidate for Peru Libre.

Also, on the sidelines of the appointments called by the electoral body, the two presidential candidates challenged each other to hold a second debate next Saturday, May 15, at the gates of the Santa Monica penitentiary in Lima, where Fujimori has been remanded in custody on two occasions.

Although the proposal for this second date was launched last Friday by Castillo, the candidate himself ruled out this Monday that he would attend.

“We already have a whole agenda with the Peruvian people, with the plazas, with the organizations, and at this moment, I have a meeting with one of the political parties,” he said.

For her part, Fujimori assured that she would wait for her opponent at the door of the prison to “continue with these debates that the Peruvian people are waiting for.”

“I’ll wait for him Saturday at 3 p.m. We’ll see if he dares to arrive,” the candidate wrote on Twitter.

Although the first opinion polls gave Castillo a comfortable lead, with a little more than 40% of voting intention, the latest ones place Fujimori already very close to the first place, at a distance of between two and five percentage points.