In the past year Keiko Fujimori’s popularity has fallen by 20% and her party is doing all it can to regain it. But this in undermined by the lack of popularity of their members of congress, many of them involved in corruption scandals. This week the case of Yesenia Ponce has reached the ethics commission as she stands accused of forging all her high school certificates. It has been found that the people posing as her ‘teachers’ have never worked at her school or indeed any other school, and that those who supposedly studied with her do not even exist. Although members of Congress are not required to have a high school certificate Ms Ponce chose to make up hers. It is still not clear if there will be any consequences as a result of this. Other Fujimorista members of parliament such as Cecilia Chacón have been found guilty of crimes such as illicit enrichment and no measures have been taken.

Another issue that has become more evident in the past week is that many members of the Fuerza Popular party use so called ‘internet trolls’ to inundate the social media of their political adversaries. A number of people who are employees of Karina Beteta, Hector Becerril, Úrsula Letona and Percy Alcalá have been found to be dedicating their time in Congressional offices to spewing insults out over political opponents and journalists. Details of how this is done have emerged from a series of YouTube videos where the head of security in Congress, retired army Colonel Walert Jibaja Alcalde, a former protegee of Montesinos, explains how to organise the insult campaigns of the so-called ‘fuji-trolls’.