Former army officer Ollanta Humala's place in a presidential runoff seemed assured, turning Peru's electoral race into a contest for second place and the right to face the fiery nationalist who has rattled Peru's elite.
Alan Garcia, a center-left ex-president, and Lourdes Flores, a pro-business former congresswoman, were neck-and-neck in the race for the second spot late on Monday. Elections officials cautioned that it could be days before a definitive outcome was released.
With 80.3 percent of the vote counted from Sunday's election, Humala had 30.3 percent compared to 24.9 percent for Garcia and 24 percent for Flores.
If no one candidate gets an absolute majority, a second round of voting is called between the two top vote-getters. The runoff is expected in late May or early June.
Flores practically declared victory over Garcia on Sunday night, but elections officials cautioned that the early vote favored ballots cast in cities, where Flores is stronger than either of her opponents.
And Garcia, whose 1985-90 presidency saddled Peru with crippling hyperinflation, said his party's internal polls showed him beating Flores by 1 percentage point.
Flores, an attorney who consistently led Garcia in opinion polls prior to Sunday's election, had been edged out of a 2001 runoff by Garcia, a silver-tongued orator.
Alejandro Toledo, the incumbent president who by law can't run for a second consecutive term, beat Garcia in that runoff.
National elections director Magdalena Chu said on Monday that her office would complete vote-counting on Friday but that final official results might not be known for another two weeks after that.
Humala, a 43-year-old military man, courted Peru's poor and terrified its rich with promises to redistribute the country's wealth. His political base is the country's Indian and mestizo majority, especially Quechua-speaking highlanders who've been discriminated against for centuries by the country's European-descended political elite.
He has also generated concern in Washington by identifying with Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's militantly anti-US president.
Garcia's supporters are equally divided among city and country; his Aprista party is the country's best organized.
Flores and Garcia vow to generally maintain free-market policies that have generated economic growth averaging 5.5 percent the past four years but haven't created enough jobs for poor Peruvians. But many analysts believe Garcia has a better chance of defeating Humala given his more leftist orientation.
In an interview on Monday with the Venezuelan-based TV station Telesur, Humala accused his opponents in Peru of distorting his message.
He accused the news media in Lima of speaking of "nationalizations, expropriations and freedom of the press being compromised, but I've never said these things. Instead, I reiterate that we have a complete respect for freedom of expression ... and we reject any attempts to expropriate private property."
He also said the new government should be able to decide on whether or not to sign the free trade agreement with the US.
RSS