Following Cesar Acuña’s removal from the presidential race for giving monetary incentives to his supporters, calls for Keiko Fujimori to be barred for the same reason have increased. Both she and her entourage appear to have given money and gifts to supporters, although they say the concrete evidence of doing so is lacking. One of her vice-presidential candidates, Vladimiro Huaroc, could find himself in difficulties on this score.

Demonstrations of anti-fujimorismo are on the rise. The first took place in Cuzco on 10 March when protesters forced Keiko Fujimori to leave a rally after speaking for only eight minutes. Campaigners overran the city’s main square chanting slogans and demanding she be excluded from the contest. A day a later, in Lima, some 4,000 people took to the streets. They marched from the Plaza San Martín around the city centre to the offices of the JNE, calling for her to be expelled from the race. Many of those involved were young people and who vowed not to forget the victims of La Cantuta University (where eight students and a teacher were killed in 1992) nor the plight of women forcibly sterilised during the Fujmori regime and who are still awaiting justice.

The Fujimori campaign has run into opposition particularly in the south of the country. Now that Guzmán, the only candidate seemingly able to stop her, has been ruled out, tempers are rising amid fears fear she may well be elected Peru’s next president. In the coming three weeks they are likely to rise further.