Peru: Electoral prosecutor suspended and announcement of presidential election results delayed

the Peruvian National Election Jury (JNE) suspended prosecutor Luis Arce, who yesterday tried to resign from the body. The electoral court asked the public prosecutor to summon his replacement as a matter of urgency in order to conclude the presidential electoral process.

The agency decided to resolve in this way the complex situation caused by the prosecutor Luis Arce, who in deliberation on the remedies promoted by candidate Keiko Fujimori he wanted to resign from his post.

Now Peru’s JNE does not have the quorum to resolve the appeals presented to cancel some 200,000 votes in the presidential elections, which leaves the proclamation of the winner of the June 6 elections on hold.

The Peruvian Electoral Body It is made up of five magistrates, but one of the posts has been vacant for months. Members of the Bar Association were unable to appoint their representative due to internal problems. The absence of another of its members entails the paralysis of activities and the development of the electoral process.

Prosecutor Luis Arce’s original intention was to resign from his post. However, the president of the jury, Jorge Salas, decided to suspend the prosecutor of the exercise as a titular member of the court and to accept neither the “refusal” nor the “resignation”.

Salas explained in a resolution that it is “impossible” for a refusal to be accepted during an electoral process (as Arce claims), understood by all as a resignation., for the post of member of the plenary session of the JNE, which “can only be made effective once the electoral process is completed”.

The Electoral Jury of Peru is in the preliminary phase of the proclamation of the winner of the second presidential round, who according to the official count was the left candidate Pedro Castillo with 50.12% of the votes cast on June 6.

Wednesday precisely, the day Arce decided to leave his post, the plenary session of the JNE rejected ten of the appeals presented by Fujimori’s party against the voting files which denounced, without providing evidence, that they had been fraudulently manipulated.

According to Salas, it is now up to the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Office of the Prosecutor) “to summon the substitute member so that, in his name, according to this constitutionally autonomous body ”.

Arce was the prosecutor’s representative in the JNE, It is also made up of members of the Judiciary, of the aforementioned Bar Association, and representatives of public and private law schools.

Resignation and criticism of the JNE

Faced with accusations of alleged systematic fraud by Fujimori, the president of the organization stressed that “the electoral process was audited by international and national observers, with results in line with acceptability standards “.

Likewise, he rejected the “offensive” expressions made by Arce in the letter of his “resignation”, considering that “They threaten the honor and the good reputation of the members of the plenary session of the JNE, the electoral system, the high authorities and the servants of the country”.

In your letter, Arce claimed he did so in order to prevent his minority vote from being used to validate false constitutional deliberations, which manifest a “clear political bias” of the plenary session.

The prosecutor, the only JNE member to accept Fujimori’s allegations, added that accusations of alleged electoral fraud and “lack of transparency and lack of disposition” of the president of the court to “find the electoral truth show questionable intentions to decide the fate” of the country.

(With information from the EFE)

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