Elections in Peru: Keiko Fujimori denounces irregularities in the ballot

Keiko Fujimori, candidate of the Popular Force for the presidency of Peru, denounced a “systematic fraud” in the ballot for the presidential elections in Peru, highlighting a series of alleged irregularities that he attributes to the Peru Free party of his rival Pedro Castillo.

“A series of irregularities have occurred” in the election process held on Sunday, Fujimori said at an afternoon press conference, which was his first appearance of the day. The right-wing candidate also asked citizens to report cases of which they are aware.

“We have also noticed that there has been a strategy to skew the results which reflect the popular will”, he added, without offering any further arguments.

At the press conference, the right-wing candidate showed Videos on social media which he says show Castillo’s party stealing votes.

The candidate is at 49.7% of the votes, against 50.2% in favor of Castillo, when the National Office for Electoral Processes (ONPE) has 94.4% of the minutes were recorded.

It is not yet possible to confirm the victory of the left candidate, that if he won, he would be the first President of the Republic outside the Lima elites who have dominated the country’s history since colonial times, since the distance between the competitors is minimal and the counting variables are very wide.

However, Fujimori’s mathematical margins, which so far garner 49.83% of the vote, are at all times reduced.

The vast majority of the votes of Peruvians abroad have yet to be counted, several thousand voices in which, as the counting progresses, Fujimori obtains greater support.

But There are also thousands of voices missing from the rural interior, where the vote in favor of Castillo is over 80%.

The race will then see if Fujimori is able not only to compensate for the distance that already separates him from Castillo., but also the weight of the peasant vote which supports the candidate of the left party Peru Libre.

Even more, Fujimori, daughter and political heir to former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), sees how the vote reflects rapid tally estimates almost like a mirror that’s what pollster Ipsos did last night, which gave Castillo the victory by 0.4 percentage point.

Until the date, Ipsos’ quick tally never failed to predict the electoral winner in Peru.

For the candidate, this situation is, for the moment, a déjà vu, since five years ago, he lost the ballot against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski by only 40,000 votes, after months ahead in the polls and despite an advantage on election night.

Fujimori, who also lost the 2011 presidential elections to Ollanta Humala in the second round, you will be faced with almost total security if a money laundering trial fails for which the prosecution is asking for more than 30 years in prison.

This legal situation was one of the slabs of his campaign of which its unpopularity was one of the central axes.

For this reason, he made this election a referendum between “freedom and communism” and in defense of the neoliberal economic model established by his father, which polarized the entire campaign.

KEEP READING: