Fujimori moves away from Sánchez and her lead exceeds 18,000 votes with 98.59% of the count

Lima.- The vote lead between right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist Roberto Sánchez increases to 18,832 with 98.59% of the votes counted in Peru’s presidential runoff, pending only the resolution of the observations submitted to the electoral juries.

The daughter and political heir of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) obtained 50.052% of the vote with 9,074,951 votes, while the Juntos por el Perú candidate has 49.948% with 9,056,119 votes, according to the latest official report from the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).

The ONPE finished counting all pending records on Friday night, and it only remains for the special electoral juries (JEE) to resolve the 1,308 observed and challenged records from the polling stations, a process that will still take days or even weeks.

Of these records, 1,211 were observed in Peru, where, curiously, for the moment Sánchez is winning with 50.16% of the votes compared to the 49.93% obtained by Fujimori, who has benefited from the vote of Peruvians abroad.

Fujimori, who announced on social media Saturday night that she has left the country for several days to accompany her 18-year-old daughter on a family trip, rejected hours earlier the proposal made by Sánchez to jointly request a vote recount.

You can read: Peru Elections: Fujimori maintains a 0.006% lead

The leftist announced that they have found signs of alleged irregularities in the vote count at some polling stations, where there has not been the corresponding transparency.

The leftist added that “they (Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular party) want to annul the votes from the south,” while his party points to having detected possible irregularities in the capital, Lima, and in the voting abroad, where Juntos por el Perú has requested the annulment of a series of polling stations.

But Fujimori stated to local media that, according to electoral regulations, only the records challenged by the Decentralized Office of Electoral Processes (ODPE), which is under the authority of the ONPE, can be subject to a recount.

“I think what has been missing on the part of Juntos por el Perú is a better reading of the law and the regulations; it is very clear in article 10 of the Electoral Law,” said the right-winger.