Lima: Peru's likely next president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, got down to work Friday forming a government aimed at uniting a country deeply divided by an election whose end game still isn't over.
It risks being a short honeymoon for the ex-Wall Street banker, who won a run-off vote by such a thin margin that his victory is trapped in limbo as the courts deal with outstanding challenges to a handful of smudged or otherwise questionable ballots.
He will also have to deal with a Congress dominated by the party of his defeated rival, Keiko Fujimori, who has refused to concede five days after the election -- even though political analysts, statistician and some members of her own party say it would be impossible for the court challenges to put her on top.
Kuczynski, 77, has forged ahead cautiously, sounding triumphant but stopping short of declaring victory.
He called for unity in a country left torn by the election, in which he took 50.12 percent to Fujimori's 49.88 percent.
"It's time to work together for the future of our country," Kuczynski said Thursday after the full -- but not yet final -- result came down.
"Elections can be tough, tense to the point of insult, but once they're over, it's time to built bridges," he told Latina TV.
The race opened old wounds dating back to the 1990s, when Fujimori's father Alberto was president.
Now serving a 25-year prison sentence for massacres by an army death squad, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) is fondly remembered by some Peruvians for his populist streak, his ruthless crack-down on the leftist rebel group Shining Path and his management of a strong economy.
But his authoritarian legacy was also heavy baggage for his daughter.
- Political puzzle -
Kuczynski, a former economy minister who studied at Oxford and Princeton, now faces the challenge of assembling a consensus cabinet.
One of his first moves was to confirm his pick for economy minister, Alfredo Thorne, a former J.P. Morgan investment banker who managed his campaign.
For the rest of his team, he will have to seek balance across the political spectrum.
Kuczynski will have to extend an olive branch to Fujimori's Popular Force party, which won 73 of the 180 seats in Congress in the first-round election in April.
His own party, Peruvians for Change, took just 18.
He will also have to repay the endorsement he received from the Peruvian left's leadership, which backed him in a run-off race between two right-leaning candidates.
Third-place candidate Veronika Mendoza of the leftist Broad Front party crucially threw her support to Kuczynski just before the second round polls, urging Peruvians to vote against Fujimori because of her father's legacy.
Her party has 20 seats in the incoming Congress.
"We have to convince both Popular Force and those who are more to the left to support me, that there are some things no Peruvian can disagree with," said Kuczynski.
- Rebooting growth -
Peru, a nation of 31 million people, is one of Latin America's fastest-growing economies.
Famed for its ancient Inca cities high in the Andes mountains and its fusion-fueled cuisine, symbolized by the refreshing raw fish dish ceviche, the country is a major exporter of gold, copper -- and cocaine.
Economic growth slowed under outgoing leftist President Ollanta Humala, from 6.5 percent when he took office in 2011 to 3.3 percent last year.
Analysts say Fujimori, 41, who was vying to become Peru's first woman president and led for most of the race, was damaged by a late surge of "anti-Fujimorismo."
Kuczynski, son of a Jewish doctor from Germany, has a long career in business and finance.
He is a cousin of Franco-Swiss filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and his American wife, Nancy, is a cousin of the Hollywood actress Jessica Lange.
AFP
