Even as the last votes are still being tallied in Peru’s nail-biter elections, it looks like left-wing presidential contender Pedro Castillo will hold on to his narrow lead over right-wing opponent Keiko Fujimori. The Organization of American States has already declared the elections clean and fair, and despite Fujimori’s repeated accusations of voter fraud, there is little appetite in Peru to follow her lead. The 7.7 percent drop on the Lima Stock Exchange seems to confirm what everyone else knows: Pedro Castillo will be the Republic of Peru’s next president.

As the dust settles on an election cycle marked by anti-communist hysteria, questions are now turning to what a future Castillo government might look like. Peru has never had a president that remotely resembled Castillo — an indigenous, left-wing trade unionist. The only immediate comparisons, the policy-driven progressive politician Verónika Mendoza or the nationalist former president Ollanta Humala, actually only underline just how shocking it will be to see someone of Castillo’s social and political background in the Government Palace.

Fueling a general climate of uncertainty is the fact that Peru currently has the world’s highest official COVID-19 death toll, and has seen an 11 percent contraction of the economy and a 10 percent rise in poverty in just the last year. If the country’s acute social and economic crisis was a decisive factor in Castillo’s victory, it also will be posing questions about the incoming administration’s ability to govern — a question compounded by uncertainty over the composition of the future administration, Castillo’s uneasy relationship with his own party, Perú Libre, and how he will stand up to a majority opposition in Congress.