Peru is still on hold pending proclamation of new president

Peru lived today 16 days after the poll, another day of concern about the lack of proclamation of the elected president, which will take several more days, while the electoral justice announced the start of the last step for resolving appeals on the ballots submitted by both parties.

The leftist trade unionist Pedro Castillo beat the right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori for 44,240 votes out of over 17.6 million valid votes (50.125% to 49.875%), according to the control of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), but to be proclaimed it is necessary that the National Election Jury (JNE) complete the resource review.

The JNE has indicated that it has already completed the resolution of appeals on the solutions of the regional electoral juries and will start tomorrow to analyze disability claims electoral files, in all cases in public and televised hearings.

The agency clarified that the resources to be resolved are 202 and that tomorrow its magistrates will debate and vote on 10 of them, according to the press agency Andean.

Meanwhile, the technical team of Free peru (PL, Castillo party) criticized the judicial strategy announced in recent days by Popular force (FP, the Fujimori group).

In this regard, FP indicated that he presented this afternoon before the Justice an injunction of habeas data so that the ONPE publishes the list of all the people who voted on the 6th of this month at each table, with their signatures and fingerprints. .

“It is the right of millions of Peruvians to access the electoral list at the polling station to check all the irregularities that we have reported to the JNE,” he said. Fujimori and Twitter.

“Protective remedies and actions are presented with procedural bad faith,” to which procedural fraud is alleged, “said the lawyer. Julien palacin, from the PL, to the RPP radio.

“The day the JNE finishes reviewing the appeals and proclaims the president, we will accept this decision,” the lawyer said. Miguel Torres placeholder image, a member of the Fujimori technical team, at the same station.

The President of the Council of Ministers (chief of staff), Violeta bermudez, reiterated that “there is no indication” of irregularities in the electoral process and that the five international observer missions and the Office of the Ombudsman and the local NGO Transparency assured that the elections “were held normally”.

“I ask citizens to have peace of mind and that we inform ourselves from reliable sources because there is no well-intentioned information; I ask you to be calm and let the JNE finish its work, ”urged Bermúdez at an official ceremony in the northern department of La Libertad.

The preliminary reports of the international electoral observation missions which verified the ballot, made public last weekend, underlined the transparency and impartiality of the JNE and the ONPE.

These are the missions of Organization of American States (OAS), Mercosur, Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations (Uniore), Standing Conference of Political Parties of Latin America and the Caribbean (Copppal) and Ecuadorian Committee on Human and Trade Union Rights (Cedhus).

In total, these entities accredited 160 observers to verify the work of polling station authorities, proxies and prosecutors before, during and after the elections.

In this context, hundreds of retired soldiers – many dressed in uniforms and even swords – demonstrated today in a square in Lima against the alleged “fraud” and against the “communism” attributed to Castillo, according to the AFP press agency.

Last week, groups of retired officers published letters denouncing the alleged fraud and, in at least one, urging the armed forces to intervene in the situation, which was deemed “unacceptable. “by President Francisco Sagasti, who asked the public prosecutor to investigate the case to” determine possible behavior prejudicial to the constitutional order “.

Among the signatories of one of these letters were respectively retired generals Francisco Morales Bermúdez and Walter Martos, former de facto president (1975-80) and former defense minister and former chief of staff (2019-20) , as well as during the demonstration. today was present the civilian Ántero Flores Aráoz, who was President of Congress (2004-05), Minister of Defense (2007-09) and ephemeral chief of staff (2020).

On the other hand, the concern about the resolution of the electoral process was revealed today with the publication of two polls reflecting the great mistrust of the population vis-à-vis the attitude of the two presidential candidates and the work of electoral authorities.

Regarding the candidates, 69% disapprove of the post-election performance of right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori and 49% reject that of left-wing trade unionist Pedro Castillo, according to a poll by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP) published by the Lima newspaper The Republic.

In addition, 53% believe that the complaints made by Fujimori about an alleged fraud are not true and were made in order to ignore the official results, which narrowly attributed the victory to Castillo, according to this survey.

Similarly, 65% of Peruvians believe that there have been signs of fraud and 51% believe that the JNE “does not act impartially in the face of electoral results”, according to a survey by the firm Datum broadcast by the channel local Panamericana television station.