RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Anticipating the official confirmation of the Peruvian electoral authorities, the Latin American left celebrated this Thursday what it already considers as a “triumph” of Pedro Castillo in last Sunday’s presidential elections over the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori.
The National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) entered today 100% of the voting records in its system, and only 0.705% of the total remains to be counted. So far, Castillo has 50.195 % of the valid votes (8,803,629 votes), with a 68,473 vote advantage over Fujimori, who received 49.805 %. Although this percentage is still higher than the percentage that separates Castillo from Fujimori (0.40 %), it isn’t easy in practice to reverse the result.
ARGENTINA, THE FIRST TO GREET CASTILLO
One of the first to react was the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, who congratulated Castillo and referred to him as “president-elect of Peru”, which annoyed the Peruvian government.
“Today, I communicated with @PedroCastilloTe, president-elect of Peru. I expressed to him my desire for us to join efforts in favor of Latin America. We are deeply twinned nations. I celebrate that the dear Peruvian people face the future in democracy and with institutional solidity”, wrote Fernández on Twitter.
The Argentinean president’s message annoyed the government of President Francisco Sagasti, who sent a note to the Argentinean embassy in Lima. In this diplomatic note, the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminded that “the final results of the general elections (of) 2021 have not yet been announced by the electoral authorities”.
For his part, Bolivian President Luis Arce congratulated Castillo and recalled the historical and cultural ties between the two bordering countries. “#Bolivia joins the celebration of the Peruvian people and congratulates brother @PedroCastilloTe, President-elect of #Peru, a country with which we share history and culture,” Arce wrote on Twitter.
Arce stressed that with Castillo, “the #PatriaGrande joins forces to continue the fight for a tomorrow with justice and equality for the peoples,” in a message that he accompanied with a video of Castillo celebrating on a balcony while below followers wave a multicolored Whipala flag, which represents the indigenous peoples of the Andean region.
Former Bolivian President Evo Morales added his congratulations to Castillo and suggested: “not to trust the OAS” or its Secretary-General, Uruguayan Luis Almagro.
“All institutions and the international community must respect the result of the sovereign will of the Peruvian people,” said Morales, of indigenous roots like Castillo.
In another message on Twitter, Morales said Nobel Literature Prize winner, “Mario Vargas Llosa is the big loser of the election that defined the presidency for brother @PedroCastilloTe.”
“He lost to (Alberto) Fujimori Sr. in 1990 and loses to (Keiko) Fujimori, daughter in 2021. He writes a lot in favor of neoliberalism but does not know how to read the reality of our peoples,” wrote the former Bolivian president.
LULA JOINS THE CONGRATULATIONS
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also joined the chorus of congratulations and described the Peruvian elections as an “important victory” for the leftist leader. “The result of the Peruvian elections is symbolic and represents one more advance in the popular struggle of our beloved Latin America,” said Da Silva.
In turn, the vice president and first lady of Nicaragua, Rosario Murillo, greeted the elections and called Castillo “president-elect”. The wife of Sandinista President Daniel Ortega wished “the best to brother Pedro Castillo” and expressed that his triumph is “a great victory of the peoples of Latin America, and it is not a victory of the disguised, but the genuine peoples”.
“They disguised neither their faces, nor their culture, nor their words, to please those who always condemn the peoples. Genuine and powerful message. A victory that we all peoples celebrate, because it is a victory that honors us all,” Murillo pointed out.
SPAIN SPEAKS OUT WITH PODEMOS
From Spain, congratulations came from Podemos and from Íñigo Errejón, deputy of Más País, who emphasized that “Peru says ‘Fujimori Never Again’ to advance towards a more just country, with more rights and more sovereignty”.
The leftist Paraguayan opposition formation Frente Guasu had anticipated this Wednesday, congratulating Castillo for what it called “irreversible triumph”. “We send our congratulations and our fraternal embrace, both to Professor Pedro Castillo and to the thousands of men and women who made this historic triumph possible”, published the Frente Guasu in a communiqué.