RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leftist candidate Pedro Castillo won with 50.12% of the votes against the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, who obtained 49.87% end of the counted votes of the second round of the presidential election in Peru.
Although the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) concluded with counting the vote, the winner still cannot be proclaimed because the pro-Fujimori party Fuerza Popular has requested the annulment of approximately 200,000 votes due to alleged irregularities attributed to fraud at the polling station.
With the total number of votes counted, Castillo obtained 8,835,579 votes, a difference of 44,058 votes over Fujimori, who received the support of 8,791,521 voters.
The ballot held on June 6 brought together more than 25 million Peruvians, of whom 18.8 million (74.5 %) cast their vote at home and abroad.
In addition to the 17.6 million valid votes, there were more than one million invalid votes, corresponding to 5.8% of the total votes cast and 121,477 blank votes, representing 0.64%, according to the ONPE report.
Out of 86,488 vote tallies processed by ONPE, 221 were annulled by resolution, and six correspond to polling place tables that were not installed.
However, the National Jury of Elections (JNE), the highest electoral body in the country, is currently deliberating, through its decentralized offices, regarding the questioned tally sheets; most complaints have been dismissed for having been submitted after the deadline or without substantive support.
Fuerza Popular’s representatives and legal advisors are also considering appealing some of the resolutions issued by the electoral juries, while other representatives allied with Fujimori, such as congressman-elect Jorge Montoya, have suggested the possibility of requesting the nullity of the elections.
The Peruvian Constitution does not allow the annulment of elections under any circumstances, except “when the null or blank votes, added or separately, exceed two-thirds of the number of valid votes”, as stated in Article 184.
Given this situation, Castillo declared on Tuesday that “we always defend the democratic framework. We are waiting for the electoral authorities to confirm” the result.
“What we have been doing on our part has been not only a defense (of the vote) in all scenarios, but also to tell the country that on our part there is no type of aggression, neither administrative, nor moral, nor political and even less electoral”, said the winning candidate in declarations to the foreign press in Lima.