Lima.- The leftist candidate for the Presidency of Peru, Roberto Sánchez, who this Sunday is contesting the runoff election against right-winger Keiko Fujimori, began the day at mass accompanied by his family in his hometown of Huaral, an agricultural town about 90 kilometers north of the capital, Lima.
Sánchez arrived at the church accompanied by his parents, his wife, and his two daughters, and upon leaving his home, he urged all Peruvians to exercise “their commitment to democracy and to the country, by casting a vote of conscience, a democratic vote of love for the homeland.”
The leader of the leftist party Juntos por el Perú, which competes on behalf of the imprisoned former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022), asked to vote “with the greatest hope for a Peru with zero discrimination and poverty, and with plenty of democracy and justice”.
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“Today is a blessed day, a day of hope, the solemnity of Corpus Christi is celebrated. Jesus Christ is present in the bread and wine, and it is a coincidence that in our Andean worldview, the festival of Qoyllurit’i has also been celebrated,” said Sánchez in reference to one of the largest pilgrimages of the Andean worldview to Ausangate, one of the tutelary mountains of Cusco.
The candidate, who is running on behalf of the imprisoned Castillo, whom he has promised to release from his sentence for the failed 2022 coup d’état, explained that he chose to start the day in his hometown because that is where his humble origins are, a place to which his parents emigrated from the Andean provinces of Ayacucho and Apurímac.
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“In this villa, the old alley with a single spout (faucet) where it welcomed me with my dad and mom, and now my wife and my daughters. This is my happiness and my wealth. Here I am fulfilled and current with my family,” he pointed out.
In this agricultural town located about 90 kilometers north of Lima, Castillo will hold the traditional electoral breakfast with which candidates usually begin voting days, before traveling to Lima to vote and await the results.
Sánchez will receive the exit polls that will be released at the closing of the polls at 5:00 p.m. local time (22:00 GMT) at Barbadillo, the prison reserved exclusively for former presidents where Castillo is serving an 11-year and 5-month prison sentence for his failed coup d’état at the end of 2022, and a rally is subsequently scheduled at the central Campo de Marte park.
