Peru’s disputed presidential vote had not shown any “serious irregularities,” international election monitors said on Friday, as the country’s caretaker leader urged calm after five days of rising tensions without a result from the cliffhanger poll on Sunday last week.
Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, a former Peruvian lawmaker and daughter of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, risks imminent trial on corruption charges if she loses to her leftist rival Pedro Castillo, who has already cast himself as the victor. Keiko Fujimori has claimed fraud, and election authorities are reviewing her request to annul about 200,000 votes, in a process expected to take several more days.
An election observation mission from the Organization of American States (OAS) said it had “observed a positive electoral process” and cast doubt on rigging claims, but called on authorities to wait until challenges to the vote had been resolved before calling a winner.
Photo: Reuters
“The mission has not detected serious irregularities,” the OAS said.
Tensions have risen in the days since the vote, as supporters of both Castillo and Fujimori have rallied to call for their candidate to be anointed president.
Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti, who is to remain in office until the vote is called, on Friday urged people “to keep the country calm in difficult times.”
“In that effort, I got in touch with several people who ... have contact with both candidates,” he said. “My request was the same for both: Lower the tension and wait for the official results.”
Peruvians voted for their fifth president in three years after a series of crises and corruption scandals saw three different leaders in office in a single week in November last year, the last one being Sagasti.
Seven of the country’s last 10 leaders have either been convicted or are under investigation for graft.
On the last count of the runoff election, rural school teacher and trade unionist Castillo led with 50.1 percent of the ballots compared with Keiko Fujimori’s 49.8 percent.
Castillo was ahead by some 60,000 votes, but if Keiko Fujimori’s challenge to the disputed ballots is accepted, she could be declared winner and so delay a corruption trial until the end of her term.
Prosecutors have said that they would seek a 30-year jail term for Keiko Fujimori on charges of taking money from scandal-tainted Brazilian construction giant Novonor, formerly known as Odebrecht, to fund failed presidential bids in 2011 and 2016.
The 46-year-old denies the allegations. She has already spent 16 months in pre-trial detention.
On Thursday, a prosecutor sought preventive custody for Keiko Fujimori, saying that she had contravened parole rules by meeting with a witness in the case. A decision is pending.
Castillo has received congratulations from two former Brazilian presidents — Dilma Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa and former Bolivian president Evo Morales.
Among sitting leaders, he received best wishes from Nicaraguan first lady and Vice President Rosario Murillo, Bolivian President Luis Arce, and Argentine President Alberto Fernandez.
The messages prompted the Peruvian government “to deliver a note of protest to the ambassadors of those countries in Peru, indicating that the final results of the 2021 general elections have not yet been officially announced by the electoral authorities,” the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday.
As in Peru’s three previous presidential elections, the tail-end of vote counting has been slow due to delays in delivering ballots from rural areas and from abroad, where 1 million of the country’s 25 million eligible voters live.
Whoever wins will lead a nation battered by recession and the world’s highest COVID-19 death rate, with more than 187,000 deaths among its 33 million people.
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