After a week, the Peruvian electoral justice has not yet confirmed who will be the next president of Peru

Peru met for a week this Sunday without knowing who will be its new president, after the poll which was held on June 6. Pedro Castillo, candidate of the Peru Free movement, retains a slight advantage in the slowness of the ballot, while Keiko Fujimori, of Fuerza Popular, insists on denouncing electoral “fraud”.

Castillo is ahead of his rival by 49,000 votes – 50.14% against 49.86% for Fujimori – after scrutinizing 99.93% of the voting tables in the polls last Sunday, which the Organization of American States (OAS) Election Observation Mission found to be clean and free of “serious irregularities.”

Peru, which had three presidents in 2020, suffers from uncertainties, as Fujimori mobilizes supporters on the streets report “frauds” and “very serious facts” during the vote and count.

Castillo, meanwhile, feels like a winner and asked his people on Saturday night for “patience” and “serenity”. Too He urged “not to fall into provocation, because we are at a critical moment”.

“There is a lot at stake: who is the winner at a time when the distance is very short and it is not known for sure the volume of votes answered […], and the legitimacy of the electoral process is at stake, ”he told the agency. AFP the analyst Sonia Goldenberg.

“There is a feeling on both sides that the National Election Jury (JNE) is unreliable, which is serious in a situation like this, and we don’t know if both candidates will accept the result,” he added.

The JNE, which reviews the poll of the electoral body (ONPE) and proclaims the winner, is under pressure from supporters of the two candidates, who demonstrate daily outside its headquarters in downtown Lima.

This Sunday, when there was a kind of pause in electoral disputes, the JNE has published the distribution of the 130 seats in Congress that will accompany the future president, elected in parallel with the first presidential round, on April 11.

The biggest benches will be those of the Peru Libre party, of Castillo (37 seats), and of Fuerza Popular, of Fujimori (24), which means that the new president will have to seek alliances for his projects (66 votes to pass a law) or to avoid impeachment, a very rapid process in Peru for which 87 votes are needed.

The new president and the new Congress are due to take office on July 28, the day Peru commemorates the bicentenary of independence.

JNE again must resolve the protest demands of thousands of votes and hundreds of polling station files, especially from Fujimori, his last hope of reversing the results.

“Keiko may still be closing the gap, but it’s very difficult for her to catch up. The result can be reversed, it is not impossible, but it becomes more and more difficult ”, explained the political scientist and academic Jessica Smith. “In the event that Keiko reverses the result, those who blame the fraud would be Castillo’s supporters,” he said.

The analyst Hugo OteroFor his part, he claims that Fujimori, faced with what appears to be an imminent victory for Castillo, is trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the electoral process. “This is the way to get rid of failure, of fall,” said the former adviser to the late former president Alan García.

On Saturday evening, Fujimori took part in a rally with thousands of followers in Plaza Grau in Lima, where he repeated his allegations of fraud.

“We are here to respect our vote, so that the minutes are analyzed, we want a transparent election”said the 46-year-old candidate, who is to be tried for suspected money laundering if she loses the second round.

An anti-corruption prosecutor last Thursday requested his preventive detention, for allegedly breaking his probation rules in the case of illegal contributions by Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

Budget demand raised tension amid slow review, in a country mired in political upheaval for a period of five years, and will be resolved by a judge on June 21.

All the tension generated after the poll is on top of the damage caused by the pandemic, which kills 188,000 in the country with the highest coronavirus death rate in the world.

Fujimori told foreign correspondents on Saturday that the “international left was intervening” in Peru, alluding to Latin American leaders’ greetings to Castillo for his “victory,” including the Argentine president. Alberto Fernandez, the bolivian Luis Arce and the Nicaraguan vice-president Rosario Murillo.

The congratulations of these heads of state have provoked protest notes from the Peruvian government to the ambassadors of these countries, since so far the result has not been formalized, despite the tendency in favor of Castillo.

With information from AFP

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