Elections in Peru: Pedro Castillo, on the verge of tipping …

From Lima

The left is approaching triumph. Due to the narrowness of the result, there is still no definition, but with each new report of the official count, its candidate, andteacher and trade unionist Pedro Castillo, increases his chances of victory over right-wing Keiko Fujimori. A country shrouded in uncertainties and tensions waited all Monday for the advance of the official count for Sunday’s presidential election. And the day ended without absolute certainty of the winner. In a latest heart attack, a campaign that has polarized and divided the country has been defined by tenths. It ended on Monday without a winner, but Castillo stabilized as a likely winner. There were mobilizations of supporters of the left-wing candidate “to defend the vote”. There were clashes with the police. At the end of this note, with 96.42% of the votes counted, Castillo obtained 50.29% and Keiko 49.71%. These tenths of distance between one and the other imply a difference of only 91 thousand votes out of 18.1 million votes already counted.

Fragile complaint

With the results against, Keiko broke her silence on Monday evening to speak of “irregularities” and “fraud”. He made the reckless accusation at a press conference in which he did not answer questions. His party members who accompanied him questioned their opponent’s table prosecutors for contesting the votes and presented a few cases of alleged ballots marked or with a high vote for Castillo which, without further evidence, they indicated that only a fraud could explain. It was a fragile complaint, which sounded like a desperate act of one who is vanquished. Before the vote, with the polls against, media linked to Fujimori began to create a scenario to expose the fraud if the result did not favor them. Keiko activated this scenario on Monday.

“Citizen watch”

Shortly after, Castillo responded by calling to “respect and defend the popular will”. He spoke from a balcony of his local supporter in Lima in front of his enthusiastic supporters. “We must be respectful of the popular will. I will be the first to uphold the will of the Peruvian people, ”he said. The crowd erupted into applause. He called for “a citizens’ vigil in defense of democracy” and qualified as “heroes and heroines of democracy” at his prosecutor’s table, questioned by Fujimori. He called for “the broadest reason, for peace”. Between applause and cheers, he ended by saying “only the people will save the people”.

Keiko started on Monday ahead of the official count. The first report to 42 percent of the total vote cast around midnight Sunday had given him nearly six points ahead. The daughter of jailed ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, who seeks to restore the Fujimori regime, spent all day Monday at her supporters’ premises watching how the presidency would elude her for the third time in a row. And, again, as in 2016, by very few votes.

During the day Monday, with each new report from the body responsible for counting the votes, the candidate who questioned the neoliberal status quo filled the gap. By the afternoon, when the count hovered at 90 percent, he had risen to first place. And he gradually increased his minimum advantage with each new count, published about every half hour on the website of the National Organization of Electoral Processes (ONPE). The country has followed these reports with anguish on both sides.

Voting from within

Castillo’s rebound in the official tally is explained by the fact that the votes in the urban areas closest to the counting centers are recorded first. There were votes from Lima and other cities where Keiko won. When voices from the interior and from the rural areas arrived in greater numbers, Castillo began to close the distance and moved on.

The leftist teacher wins in most of the country, but the right-wing candidate likens it in voice to his victory in Lima – which concentrates a third of the voters and where he obtained 65.6% according to the official result, already one hundred percent in the capital and in other areas of the coast. In the poor and marginalized rural and Andean areas, Castillo gained a lot, exceeding 80 percent in some areas. These votes, the last to be counted, gave him the victory over the uncertain post-election Monday.

Vote abroad

At Fujimorismo, they did not resign themselves to another defeat and clung to the hope of the overseas vote to return the result. About a million Peruvians were allowed to vote abroad, but the advance of the count of this vote, which reached 26% on Monday, recorded absenteeism of more than 60%. During the partial count of this vote, Keiko obtained 61.9%, or just over 48,000 votes, while Castillo reached 30,000 votes. About 300,000 votes from abroad are said to be missing. In Argentina, with a tally of 99.7 percent, more than 46,000 Peruvians had voted, only 37 percent of those qualified to do so. Keiko won with 57.3 percent. Keiko said she was “very optimistic” that the foreign vote “will match the outcome”.

Castillo, who had received the first results in his native Cajamarca, an Andean region in the north of the country, traveled to Lima on Monday morning. He went to his local supporter in the center of town, where his supporters gathered on the street. He stepped out onto a second story balcony and waved his hand, raising his arms. He was greeted with applause and harangues. At that time, the official results still gave Keiko the winner. At the end of the afternoon, already with partial results in his favor, he reappeared on the balcony. In front of the local festival, the atmosphere was already victorious. At night, he stood on that balcony again to respond to Keiko’s attempts to spoil the electoral process which gave victory to the left.