Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori led a protest on Saturday and demanded the annulment of voting ballots against her in Peru’s recent presidential elections, while socialist Pedro Castillo leads with a minimal but constant advantage a vote count that is close to its end.
Castillo, a primary school teacher unknown to the majority of the country until shortly before the elections, has 50.15% of the votes, while the daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori achieved 49.85% when 99.93% of the ballots were counted. , according to the electoral office ONPE.
“If the (electoral) jury analyzes this, the election will be turned around, dear friends,” Fujimori exclaimed to hundreds of supporters in downtown Lima, many of them holding the red and white Peruvian flag. “I am one of the people who never give up,” he said.
Almost a week before the elections, Peruvians are anxious about the electoral outcome and the leftist candidate is getting closer and closer to winning the contest with a difference of 0.30%, equivalent to some 50,000 votes.
However, Fujimori, who made “table fraud” accusations this week without further grounds, is seeking that the electoral authorities annul some 200,000 votes, a request that was rejected because it was presented after the deadline.
Fujimori said he will appeal this decision and wait for the “last vote” to be counted. He also added that “if we reach a final result, we will recognize the results, there are no international instances.”
“There is definitely a plot, people want to ‘turn the tables’ on us, they are annulling Keiko’s votes,” said Ronald Vertis, an attendee at the candidate’s rally.
Castillo’s party rejected the allegations of alleged fraud and international observers of the process in Lima have stated that the elections were transparent.
History could repeat itself for the candidate, who lost in the previous 2016 election with a small difference (0.24%) to the banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
Fragmented country
Castillo, 51, has received the advance greeting of leaders and leaders of the left of Latin America, something that angered the government and asked the international community to wait for the final results.
“The Peruvian people deserve it,” Castillo said in a message on Twitter late on Friday. A possible Castillo government scares the markets, in large part because his party describes itself as Marxist-Leninist, although the candidate moderated in the final stretch of the campaign.
Fujimori earlier on Saturday blamed the “international left” for pushing for Castillo to win.
“Peru is a country strategically, geopolitically speaking, fundamental in Latin America and that is why this attempt by the international left,” he said.
A prosecutor this week requested the preventive detention of Fujimori for “breach” of restrictions in a case of money laundering for alleged illegal contributions from the Brazilian firm Odebrecht and other locals during previous presidential campaigns of 2011 and 2016.
Hundreds of supporters of both candidates have marched in recent days, each on their own, through the streets of downtown Lima and in front of the headquarters of the electoral office, to ask for speed in the process that has deeply divided the country.
Higher-income Peruvians support Fujimori and lower-income Peruvians support Castillo, including key mining regions of the world’s second largest copper producer.
The elections come after a political storm in the mining country, with four presidents in five years, protests and multiple complaints of corruption against politicians.
The current interim president, Francisco Sagasti, will deliver the post to his successor on July 28, when the country will celebrate its 200th anniversary of Independence.
Analysts have affirmed that whoever wins political instability could remain, due to the population’s distrust of its politicians and when the local economy has been severely affected by one of the most aggressive coronavirus outbreaks and with the highest mortality rate in the world. .
