Ignore votes to skew the result | An injection was …

From Lima

The last chapter of the historic election won by the left in Peru consists of suspicious maneuvers by electoral justice to favor the annulment of the votes against the virtual elected president Pedro Castillo, allegations of fraud due to this unusual decision and of setbacks in these maneuvers. The right seeks to smear and ignore, and this Friday the National Election Jury, composed of four members, decided to extend by two days the legal deadline for submitting requests for invalidity of votes already counted. It is Fujimori’s ultimate strategy to try to reverse the outcome by massively nullifying Castillo’s votes. The deadline expired on Wednesday, but Castillo’s Peru Libre party responded quickly. They came out to denounce the illegality of this extension of mandate and to denounce an intention of fraud in this suspicious decision of the Jury, and called on their voters to mobilize to defend the votes which give the victory to the candidate of the left. Soon after, the jury backed out and overturned the term extension, which was in favor of right-wing Keiko Fujimori’s intention to win the table election by quashing his rival’s votes.

Castillo won by 60,000 votes, 50.17 against 49.83% for the daughter of the former imprisoned dictator Alberto Fujimori. Fujimorism is betting on the antidemocratic maneuver of massively canceling Castillo’s votes to distort this result. Last Wednesday, Keiko, when the vote count was already assuring defeat, announced, within the legal deadline to do so, that they would present demands for the cancellation of 200,000 votes from rural areas where Castillo has largely won. . The arguments they put forward to present these nullities do not hold water. A good part of these requests arrived after the legal deadline. This is why they needed an extension of the mandate, which the jury granted them, but which was then revoked. The local electoral juries which examined these requests for cancellation of votes have already rejected several for lack of arguments. Fujimori has announced that he will appeal to the jury, which will extend a final decision by several days.

Fujimori supporters protested threateningly outside the house of the entity’s president, magistrate Jorge Luis Salas. They also did so in front of the local electorate. Aggressive speeches are the keystone of these protests. Castillo supporters also rallied before the jury on Friday to defend the electoral result. A country divided in two. That of the elites and that of the popular sectors. One who has lost and does not accept it, and maneuvers to turn defeat into victory, the other who defends his triumph.

In its rush to smear the elections that gave the winner to the left Castillo – challenges have yet to be resolved for there to be official confirmation – the right has also shot President Francisco Sagasti. Sagasti’s centrist government has remained neutral, without interfering in the electoral process, but it is now claimed that it favored the leftist candidate. Another baseless accusation, like the alleged fraud. A telephone conversation between President Sagasti and Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa sparked the charges against the president.

The conversation between Sagasti and Vargas Llosa quickly leaked. A TV show, furiously aligned with Keiko and a source of fake news, was the first to hear about this dialogue, and concocted a story that the president asked the writer to speak with Keiko, which the novelist argues, in to tell him to accept his defeat. From this version, the political and media right began to denounce an alleged interference by the president in the electoral process in favor of Castillo.

Sagasti confirmed the call, but gave another version. He said he contacted the writer to ask him to speak with Keiko, his new ally and protege, to help defuse the tense situation, the lower polarization, but did not ask her to acknowledge. his defeat. And he clarified that for the same purpose of calming things down, he also called people close to Castillo.

Keiko used this episode to throw more mud at the election than she wants to mess up because she lost them. Exceptionally, the candidate who had the support of all economic power and the mainstream media, victimized herself by saying that the terrain was unfavorable to her. It sounded like a bad joke. Calls were heard to promote the impeachment of President Sagasti, but the coup movement quickly faltered.

Peasant and indigenous organizations rejected Fujimori’s attempt to overturn their votes and said they declared themselves on “high alert”. They have announced mobilizations if the votes that Fujimorism claims to ignore, mainly from peasants and natives, are canceled.