Voting in Peru: the electoral jury began examining the votes contested by Keiko Fujimori and has already rejected 10 appeals

Peru’s electoral jury began evaluating requests for annulment of votes presented by Keiko Fujimori on Wednesday, What was narrowly overtaken by socialist Pedro Castillo in the recent second round of the presidential election.

The National Election Jury (JNE) You must review these requests to officially declare the winner of the June 6 election., a task might take days and extend the uncertainty at world’s second largest producer of copper.

After the first hours of the start of the process, the Jury Plenary declared unfounded, majority, the first ten appeals of Fuerza Popular’s cancellation requests by alleging an alleged “electoral fraud”.

The decision marks a previous, since these decisions are the ratify from the autonomous body to the resolutions decided by the Special Electoral Juries (JEE), first instance which rejected 100% of the resources of the Fujimori party for failing to find evidence to support Fuerza Popular’s arguments.

The electoral office declared that it received in the first place 1,088 requests to cancel polling stations, although of this total 281 were submitted within the legal deadlines. But Fujimori’s party insists, citing suspected fake signatures of voters at polling stations, and filed hundreds of appeals involving at least 200,000 votes.

Most nullity requests concern voices from very remote or poor rural areas, where the conservative candidate and daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori had no major support.

“The jury is required to examine these situations”, Lourdes Flores, Fujimori’s lawyer, told the electoral jury magistrates who began to review the first ten acts on appeal. “There are clues of table fraud the national election jury cannot ignore“, did he declare.

Castillo’s party, which seeks rewrite the Constitution, dismissed accusations of fraud and international observers of the process in Lima said the elections were transparent. The party defense of Castillo, a son of peasants and unknown to most Peruvians before the elections, rejected allegations of forged signatures during the hearing.

“We defend the vote of the citizens of this country, fundamentally of the Deep Peru, in front of those who seek to twist the popular will and withdraw the right to vote from thousands of Peruvians that they have opted for a program of profound change, ”said lawyer Ronald Gamarra.

The close election has deeply divided Peruvians and marches are recorded almost every day in central Lima, with supporters of Castillo and Fujimori demanding speed of the process and respect for the popular vote.

Meanwhile, the uncertainty and the delay the announcement of a winner affected the Financial markets. The Peruvian currency, the ground , closed stable after hitting historic lows this week. Meanwhile, the benchmark index of the Lima Stock Exchange edged down 0.07%.

While waiting for the decision, Castillo visited a coastal town 86 kilometers south of Lima affected by a 6.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday evening, which authorities say left ten houses damaged and at least ten injured.

“Urgency has no political color”Castillo, who was proclaimed the winner of the presidential elections after completing the vote count, told reporters, in which he was the first with an advantage of 44,058 votes.

(With information from Reuters)

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