Alejandro Toledo - 2011 Election

2011 Election

In December 2010, Toledo announced his candidacy in the 2011 presidential election. Telling the Peruvian Times that "Garcia (the incumbent) is governing for the rich and not the poor", he said that when he left office, with 1 sol (approximately $0.34) bough 10 loaves bread; now it bought you five. "President Alan García (must) realize that Peru is much greater, much deeper, more generous and more warlike than the rich friends that surround him.”

The general election, which took place on April 10, 2011, Toledo won 15.62% of the vote putting him behind leftist former army officer Ollanta Humala (with 31.75%), Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former president (with 23.5%), and Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (with 18.52%), and ahead of Luis Castaneda (with 9.84%). After the initial round, Fujimori received the support of candidate and former president Alan García, while Toledo supported Humala, calling him the lesser of two evils.

However, Toledo’s support came with conditions, and he threatened to mobilize protests if Humala’s presidency did not live up to Toledo’s standards in terms of protecting democratic institutions, human rights, and stimulating the economy. Just before the election, an email was released revealing that the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, had given financial support to Humala's 2006 campaign. It also emerged that Humala's wife, Nadine Heredia, had been well-paid for consulting work at a pro-Chavez newspaper.

In the final tally, Humala won 51.6% of the vote to Fujimori's 48.4%. The day after the final vote, the Peruvian stock market plunged out of concern for the state of Peru's neo-liberal economic policies.

Drawing on his close relations with Evo Morales, President-elect Humala visited Bolivia shortly after the election and suggested the possibility of reunification of the two countries, a proposal which Toledo explicitly rejected, warning that he would not “allow Peru to become another Venezuela or Nicaragua.”

Amidst worries that Humala's election represented a shift too far to the left, Peru Posible, under the leadership of Toledo, announced the month after the election that its members would not accept ministerial positions within the administration and would limit its support of Humala's government to backing on some issues in the Congress.