Alan García 27%, Ollanta Humala 20%, Alejandro Toledo 9%…. Percentages of voting intentions? No, this is the ranking of people’s perceptions as to who are the most corrupt people in Peru today. Tarred by the brush of the so-called ‘narcoindulto’ scandal (the granting of presidential pardons to people imprisoned on drugs offences), Alan García tops the list of those identified as ‘the most corrupt’ individual. A year ago, 15% rated García as such. The survey was conducted earlier this month by the polling firm, Datum.

With corruption very much on voters’ minds, this may affect the electoral possibilities of a number of candidates in the presidential elections. In the case of Keiko Fujimori, her father’s reputation may rub off on her inasmuch as she was Alberto Fujimori’s first lady following his marital breakup and was thus privy to decisions taken at the time.

Following García in order of ‘preference’ comes Humala, followed by Vladimiro Montesinos (13%). And following Toledo come Nadine Heredia (4%), Martín Belaunde Lossio (3%), Rodolfo Orellana (3%) and César Alvarez (the former governor of Ancash region) (2%).

Just under 80% of those interviewed by Datum thought that corruption had become more pronounced in Peru over the last three years. Only 3% said they thought it had diminished.

Among institutions, the judiciary took first prize (65%) for corruption (when people were asked which three institutions topped their list), followed by the police force (45%) and the Congress (44%).