LIMA, Peru (AP) — Keiko Fujimori, the conservative daughter of a disgraced former president, and Roberto Sánchez, a nationalist congressman and former minister, emerged Wednesday as the leading candidates in Peru's presidential election as authorities continued to count the ballots for a fourth straight day.
Officials were forced to extend voting into Monday after ballots had not been delivered in time to polling stations.
With 90% of the ballots tallied,
official results on Tuesday showed Fujimori leading the count with 16.95%, while Sánchez earned 11.99%. Trailing narrowly in third place was Rafael López Aliaga, the ultraconservative former mayor of Peru’s capital, Lima, with 11.94%.
The election has been mired with logistical issues that left thousands in the country and abroad unable to cast ballots. That prompted authorities to allow more than 52,000 residents of Lima to vote on Monday. The extension, announced after vote counting had begun Sunday evening, also covered Peruvians registered to vote in Orlando, Florida, and Paterson, New Jersey.
A presidential candidate needs more than 50% of votes to win outright. The two candidates with the most votes in a first round advance to the runoff on June 7.
The winner will be Peru’s ninth president in just 10 years and will replace José María Balcázar, who was elected interim president in February. He replaced another interim leader who was ousted over corruption allegations just four months into his term.
In her fourth bid for the presidency, Fujimori has promised to crack down on crime but has also defended laws that experts say make it difficult to prosecute criminals. The laws, which her party backed in recent years, eliminated preliminary detention in certain cases and raised the threshold for seizing criminal assets.
If elected, she has said that judges presiding over criminal cases will be anonymous and prisoners will have to work to earn their food.
A former minister of foreign trade under Castillo, Sánchez has pledged to use the executive power of the pardon to release his former mentor if elected. During his campaign he frequently wore a wide-brimmed Andean peasant hat, a gift from his political ally and imprisoned former President Pedro Castillo.
The sluggish pace of the count mirrored Peru’s 2021 presidential election, a contest where final tallies weren’t completed until five days after polls closed.
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