Uncertainty grows in Peru this Tuesday as the scrutiny of the presidential ballot led by the leftist candidate Pedro Castillo progresses slowly, after his rival, the right-wing Keiko Fujimori, denounced “signs of fraud”, a possibility ruled out by electoral experts.
Castillo, a rural school teacher, maintains an advantage of 78,737 votes over his rival Keiko Fujimori when 97.28% of the minutes of the second round of elections held this Sunday in Peru have already been scrutinized, in a contest that continues with an open end, according to sources from the electoral body.
According to the latest official report, the candidate of the left-wing Peru Libre party has received so far 50.23% of the valid votes (8 million 596,896) against 49.77% (8 million 518,159) of the candidate of the right-wing Fuerza Popular party.
This information already contains 99.17% of the votes cast at the national level, while the vote count for Peruvians abroad currently reaches 51.57%. In Peru, the vote of 18.1 million people has been registered, while abroad the suffrage of another 156,923 has been reported.
The daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori denounced “irregularities” and “signs of fraud” on Monday after her rival came to lead the scrutiny.
“There is a clear intention to boycott the popular will,” said Fujimori, who showed a couple of videos and a couple of photos to support his complaint, including a voting record of a rural table in which his opponent obtained 187 votes and she none.
Fujimori’s lead at the start of the vote narrowed as the vote count in rural and jungle areas progressed, but the fight continues on Tuesday side by side.
The Peruvian electoral body (ONPE) denies the possibility of fraud, as well as the president of the Transparency Civil Association, Adriana Urrutia, who told the newspaper El Comercio: “There is no evidence that allows us to speak of electoral fraud.”
No possibility of fraud
“There is no fraud. There are only isolated cases that deserve to be investigated,” the political scientist told the EFE agency, noting that in addition to the lack of support provided by Fujimori’s complaint, there is evidence collected by more than 1,400 volunteers from the organization that point out that “the vote was carried out in absolute normality.”
Thus, he insisted: “we have no evidence in our reports that it is possible to speak of a systematic fraud.”
In that sense, the president of Transparency indicated that it is up to the Fujimori party Fuerza Popular “to account for why it used the word fraud” in its complaint and reiterated the request that it not be used falsely in this electoral context, “as there is no evidence that it exists, and it is time to trust the work of the authorities, the electoral process and respect for the vote. “
“In a voting process that is already polarized, saying fraud is causing anxiety. You just have to wait calmly and calmly for the results,” he added.
Urrutia also recalled that, given those issued by the candidate, as there were more than 1,300 electoral records observed, the reality is that there are only 485, as can be freely seen on the page of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).
In the opinion of the political scientist, reporting “fraud” only generates “mistrust in the electoral authorities, in the process itself and therefore leads to mistrust of the results and reduces the legitimacy of the elected representative.”
“This also disrupts the possibility of governing with the guaranteed recognition of the results, which are citizen expression at the polls,” he added.
Faced with the situation Peru is facing, Urrutia pointed out as “very necessary” that the political forces “identify the damage to democratic continuity in the short and long term” when evaluating “the words and strategies they use.”
Even Paraguayan Rubén Ramírez, head of the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Peru, congratulated the country’s electoral authorities for the use of “mechanisms that contribute to the transparency of electoral processes and provide certainty to citizens “.
In a video message broadcast on OAS social networks, Ramírez stressed that last Sunday Peruvians went to the polls “to express their will in a peaceful and democratic manner” and recognized the electoral authorities “for organizing a process of great complexity, marked by the pandemic and by political polarization “.
While the suspense is lengthening, Castillo asked on his Twitter account “to be attentive to defend the democracy that is expressed in each of the votes, inside and outside our beloved Peru.”
The rural professor has remained silent this Tuesday in silence, after having affirmed on Monday that he will be “the first to enforce the will of the Peruvian people” and greet the “citizen vigil for democracy” that his followers do outside of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) in Lima.
The electoral body launched, for its part, an alert on its social networks to ask that “be careful with false news about the electoral records”, after which it explained how and in which cases they are observed.
A tricky trend to reverse
Despite the consistent advantage that Castillo maintains in the official count, Fujimori assured this Monday that he remains “optimistic” that “the vote will be even” when the votes cast abroad are finished, where he has a wide favoritism. One million of the 25 million Peruvian voters are entitled to cast their votes, which take time to be counted.
“The vote from abroad may change the trend, but desperation has already begun to spread on Keiko’s side,” Peruvian political scientist Jessica Smith told AFP.
In fact, the arrival of the foreign vote meant that for the first time since the recount began, Fujimori recovered votes against Castillo. However, a small percentage of votes from rural and remote jungle areas of Peru also remain to be counted, which are considered to be very favorable to Castillo.
“The allegations of fraud are going to be part of the show on one side or the other, but if Keiko does not start to go back, the rice is already cooked,” added the academic from the Central University of Chile.
The Peru Libre de Castillo party asked the ONPE in a statement to “take care of the correct protection of the voting data, when processing and publishing them.”
Abroad, Keiko currently gets 66.17% of the votes compared to 33.83% of his rival, with 56.74% of the polls scrutinized, according to the latest ONPE report.
Nationwide, 76% of registered voters voted on Sunday, more than 70% of the first round in April.
The ballot seems far from ending the political convulsions of the last five years, which led Peru to have four presidents since 2018, three of them in five days in November 2020.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters
