• Elections
• Peru

Peruvian electoral material has not arrived at large voting centers

Lima, Apr 12 (EFE).-

The Peruvian businessman, former Lima mayor, and presidential candidate Rafael López Aliaga, leader of the far-right party Popular Renovation (Renovación Popular in Spanish), stated, without evidence, that he believes the attempt at fraud in the general elections has already begun.

According to him, it is no coincidence that electoral material has not arrived at large voting centers in areas where voters overwhelmingly support him.

“I believe the attempt at fraud has already started in areas where statistics show they belong to Popular Renovation. The electoral material is not arriving, and several elderly people, sick patients, and even those on oxygen who arrived early may not return. Let’s be vigilant,” López Aliaga wrote on X.

The general elections began on Sunday with delays of up to three hours in some Lima voting centers due to a lack of electoral materials, the responsibility of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).

In recent weeks, the ultraconservative candidate spoke of narratives of fraud without concrete evidence, referring to the 2021 victory of former left-wing president Pedro Castillo over right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori. He had also criticized and threatened the head of the ONPE, Piero Corvetto.

“Corvetto is not going to do to us what he did last time… Oddly, he prepared for 10 years to show us this,” he told local media after voting in the parking lot of the state oil company Petroperú, located in the financial district of San Isidro.

López Aliaga, who also ran in the 2021 presidential elections, repeated several times that the delay in opening voting locations in Lima is “no coincidence.”

The leader of Popular Renovation, who voted to the applause of residents of one of the districts that supports him the most, confirmed that he has received multiple complaints from outside the country; for example, he indicated that in Barcelona, they did not allow party representatives of Popular Renovation to enter the installation of polling stations, and in Tampa, Florida, they had been diverted to Miami to vote.

At the start of election day, the ONPE issued a statement attributing the delay to a breach by the company responsible for distributing electoral materials. The statement indicated that the materials would arrive around 8:00 am local time.

However, four hours after the elections had just started, some Lima polling places were still closed, resulting in long lines of upset voters throughout the capital. Other centers, such as the one where Fujimori voted, had to open the polling station manually because the computerized scrutiny program was not functioning. EFE

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