Peru’s Presidential Election Runoff!
Peru has changed several presidents recently!
Lima. May 9 (EFE).-
Peru’s presidential election has reached its peak of tension this weekend, with conservative frontrunner Keiko Fujimori and left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez launching their campaigns for the runoff with rallies in Lima, while far-right Rafael López Aliaga, who trails Sánchez by 15,000 votes, made unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud and called for the annulment of the first-round results.
With 99.5 percent of the votes counted, Fujimori is guaranteed a spot in the second round scheduled for June 7, having secured 17.17 percent of valid votes, while Sánchez has 11.99 percent and López Aliaga 11.91 percent, separated by just about 15,000 votes pending the review of around 200 ballots from Lima, where the ultraconservative candidate is the most voted.
Fujimori and Sánchez led separate rallies marked by Mother’s Day while López Aliaga held another in Lima to step up pressure on electoral authorities by insisting on his demand to subject the elections to an international audit and hold complementary elections, with a supplementary voting day for those who were unable to vote on Apr. 12.
The candidate and leader of the Popular Renewal party claims that he was deliberately disadvantaged by logistical problems that caused major delays in the opening of polling stations on election day in Lima, his electoral stronghold, despite analysis by observation missions such as the Asociación Civil Transparencia concluding that these issues did not influence the final result.
López Aliaga said that the president of the National Jury of Elections (JNE), Roberto Burneo, would go to jail if he proceeded to officially proclaim the results, after the electoral body did not accept his claim to call for supplementary elections in Lima.
Meanwhile, at a rally in Huaycán, a populous area on the outskirts of Lima, Sánchez on Saturday urged respect for the vote ahead of the imminent proclamation of the election results and the likely “chaotic” atmosphere, which he warned would be caused by the losers.
The candidate and leader of the Together for Peru party, running in the name of former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) and, unlike López Aliaga, has his vote concentrated in rural areas, announced that they had made a call to other center and left-wing parties to form a “patriotic and popular center,” which would allow them to have “a solid coalition.”
For her part, Fujimori, daughter and heir of former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), met with mothers in the Lima district of San Juan del Lurigancho, the largest in the country, where she did not mention the vote count nor the complaints from López Aliaga, who has insulted her for not supporting his fraud allegations.
The candidate and leader of Popular Force party lamented that there was “a State in total abandonment” despite having more resources than during her father’s government.
“There are a few days left, a few weeks left, let’s keep running this campaign with enthusiasm, humility, hope and faith in our future,” she said. EFE
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