Peru’s electoral jury replaced on Saturday a magistrate who had resigned and will resume his work in seeking to close the presidential election to proclaim the new ruler, while supporters of Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori who question the process are preparing new protests.
The jury’s work to announce the winner of the second round of elections on June 6 was delayed by the decline to office on Wednesday of one of its four members, after the body rejected the first requests to annul votes presented by Fujimori.
In the vote count, the socialist Castillo was first with an advantage of 40,058 votes, but Fujimori has presented legal recourses to annul 200,000 ballots, alleging alleged false signatures at the voting tables, without further evidence.
To close the process, the electoral jury must review all challenges, a work that was slowed down by the resignation of one of its members, who criticized the actions of his colleagues despite international observers such as the Organization of American States (OAS). said that the elections were fair.
“Electoral justice cannot be paralyzed or blocked, less in this phase of the process,” said the president of the National Elections Jury, Jorge Salas. “The interruptive arts will not prosper,” he added after swearing in VÃctor RodrÃguez as a new member of the body.
The work of the vote challenge review jury will restart on Monday, a spokeswoman for the body said.
The election has deeply divided Peruvians and almost every day there are marches in Lima, with supporters of Castillo and Fujimori demanding speed in the process and respect for the popular vote.
Marches and conspiracies
For Saturday afternoon, both groups have announced new demonstrations, despite calls from the authorities to avoid crowds at a time when the country suffers from the most lethal COVID-19 outbreak by number of inhabitants in the world.
“We continue forward with great hope. I wait for you (…) in the #VigiliaPorLaDemocracia,” conservative Fujimori, daughter of the jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori, said on Twitter in a call for the march that she called “Respect my Vote.”
The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, of the influential Catholic Church, said in a statement that it defends the right of everyone to demonstrate but said that this “must be carried out without resorting to violence, neither physical nor verbal.”
Added to the intricate process was Thursday’s complaint of an alleged conspiracy against the election by jailed former intelligence adviser Vladimiro Montesinos, who was a close collaborator of former president Fujimori.
According to audios of telephone calls broadcast in the local press, Montesinos proposed bribing members of the electoral jury to favor Fujimori. The Navy said it will investigate the calls from its prison on a naval base and the prosecution will do the same to determine responsibilities.
“We are outraged that an inmate appears on the scene at such a critical moment in our democratic life,” Prime Minister Violeta Bermúdez said on Saturday.
Castillo’s supporters affirm that they will march to stop those who want to “delegitimize the electoral process” and have announced on social networks that they will call a national strike if the official proclamation of the socialist candidate “as president of Peru is not given before 6 of July”.
Castillo, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher and the son of peasants, plans to rewrite the Constitution to give the state a more active role in the economy and keep more of the profits from key mining companies, which has made people nervous. investors and shook the markets.
