Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Son of Jewish Immigrant Grabs Narrow Lead in Peru Presidential Race

— The son of a Polish-Jewish immigrant from Germany has a slight lead in Peru’s presidential elections.

Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former prime minister of Peru and economist for the World Bank known as PPK, as of Monday morning held a 1 percent lead in the voting over Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the jailed former president Alberto Fugimori.

Final results are not expected until at least Tuesday.

Kuczynski’s lead over Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of an imprisoned former authoritarian leader, narrowed to just 0.36 percentage points late on Monday.

With 95 percent of votes processed in Peru’s closest presidential election in at least 50 years, Kuczynski led Fujimori by fewer than 60,000 votes. Preliminary results on Sunday put more than a percentage point between them.

Votes from Peruvians living abroad were largely still to be tallied and could decide the outcome. One review of sample ballots suggested they were more likely to favor Kuczynski, a former prime minister and World Bank economist.

Kuczynski ran in the 2011 presidential elections, when Ollanta Humala was elected.

Kuczynski’s Jewish father, Maxime, was born in Poland and moved with his family to Germany. He received his degree in philosophy in 1913 and a degree in medicine in 1919. He served in the German army during World War I.

Maxime Kuczynski fled to Peru in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. The candidate’s mother, Madeleine Godard, was of Swiss-French descent.

The younger Kaczynski served twice as finance minister as well as Cabinet chief under former President Alejandro Toledo. Previously he was an economist with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund before being named general manager of Peru’s Central Reserve Bank. He also served as co-chairman of First Boston in New York City, an international investment bank.—WIth Reuters

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.