Lima (EFE).- The scrutiny of the Peruvian presidential elections concluded on Friday, 33 days after the vote, 100% of votes counted confirming a second round on Jun. 7 between right-winger Keiko Fujimori and left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez.
Fujimori (Fuerza Popular Party) received the most votes, 17.18% of valid votes, and 2,877,678 votes. Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú Party) came second and got 12.03% and 2,015,114 votes, closely followed by the far-right Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular Party) with 11.90% and 1,993,904 votes.
Sánchez’s second-place victory over López Aliaga was by just 21,210 votes. López Aliaga is demanding that the electoral authorities not proclaim the results until his allegations of fraud are addressed.
He claimed that he had been the victim of fraud due to the significant delays in opening polling stations in Lima, his main electoral stronghold.
The second round will determine who governs the country for the 2026–2031 period, following a decade of instability that has seen eight presidents in 10 years.
The election will see a re-run of the 2021 election, with Keiko Fujimori, the daughter and political heir of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000), who has lost the last three second rounds, competing against Pedro Castillo’s political heir, Pedro Castillo (2021–2022), who defeated Fujimori in 2021.
These were the largest elections in Peru’s history, with 35 presidential candidates standing amid widespread disaffection with the country’s political class.
Blank and invalid votes accounted for 16.84% of those cast, totalling 3,418,321, a higher figure than that obtained by any other candidate.
The scrutiny, one of the longest, was so narrow for determining Fujimori’s rival for the second round.
A similar situation occurred in the second rounds of both the 2016 and 2021 elections, with the winner defined by a margin of just over 40,000 votes.
Over the past few weeks, the 60 special electoral juries established throughout the country have had to review over 5,000 disputed voting records due to various inconsistencies.
The aforementioned has forced a vote recount in some cases, with extensive public hearings held to resolve all the issues raised by the parties involved. EFE
fgg/dgp
