Results of the ballot in Peru: with 100% scrutinized, Keiko Fujimori further from the victory and closer to prison

Angel Paez

06/11/2021 7:31 AM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 06/11/2021 7:31 AM

Since Keiko Fujimori declared that she suspected that the party of her competitor

Pedro Castillo

had set up a machinery to take away votes from the Peruvian ballot, subsequent events not only contradicted her, but also kept her from achieving electoral victory.

New incidents of the judicial case that she faces

lead her back to jail.

On Wednesday night the presidential candidate appeared again at a press conference to report

that she had gathered more evidence

of alleged irregularities during the elections, and announced that an army of lawyers will raise the nullity of the results in 802 polling stations throughout the country. country, which represents a universe of 300 thousand votes altogether.

It

is

precisely

the amount

that could help Keiko Fujimori overcome the leftist Pedro Castillo, who maintains a small but firm advantage over the daughter of former inmate Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who participates for the third consecutive time to the presidency, after the frustrated attempts of 2011 and 2016.

Pedro Castillo leads the elections in Peru with all the minutes processed.

Photo DPA

However, while Keiko Fujimori is dedicated to tarnishing the result of the ballot

because it appears adverse,

the head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Piero Corvetto, reported on the afternoon of this Thursday that the 100 % of the minutes “of a

safe, calm, clean and transparent

election

, as we promised”.

With 100% of the records processed, the leftist Pedro Castillo reached 50,198% of the valid votes and Keiko Fujimori 49,802%, which implies a difference

of

69,546

votes.

Keiko's difficulties

Knowing the trend that favored Professor Castillo, Fujimori precisely, according to his narrative of alleged fraud, announced the request for the annulment of the results in 802 tables with the idea of

catching a few thousand votes to win the election.

It will not be very easy to prove it

because the evidence of alleged machinations by representatives of Peru Libre, Pedro Castillo's party, to snatch votes from Keiko Fujimori, lack veracity.

The candidate Fujimori, for example, cited a case in the highland town of Acora, in the department of Puno, on the border with Bolivia. He denounced that

the three members of the table belonged to the same Catacora family

and that Peru Libre had named them, which explained that surprisingly at that table they had only obtained 1 vote, against the 197 for Castillo.

A journalist from the Lima daily

La República

traveled to Acora and interviewed Bertín, Luis and Humberto Catacora, and confirmed that the three were not members of the same Aymara family,

because in the town where they live, almost all of them have the same surname.

They did not even know each other until they were summoned as members of the polling station. As if that were not enough, they have no relationship with the Peru Libre party and had been selected by lottery, which was ratified by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE).

Electoral experts recalled that when Alberto Fujimori committed fraud in an attempt to win a third election in 2000, he

kept electoral bodies under his control

, had millions of dollars in public funds to finance his campaign, and had the support of the majority of the media by paying them impressive bribes.

A big difference with Pedro Castillo,

who could not even reach the necessary representatives to monitor the polling stations

throughout the country to defend the votes in his favor.

When Keiko Fujimori's plan to annul the vote of 802 tables was in full swing, the prosecutor José Domingo Pérez in charge of the investigation against the presidential candidate,

asked the justice to return to prison

because he violated the prohibition to contact witnesses in the case .

Pérez,

who has requested 30 years and 10 months in prison for Fujimori

for having received US $ 17.3 million in illegal contributions - including those from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht - to finance his presidential campaigns in 2011 and 2016, said that the defendant was met with former Fujimori congressman Miguel Torres Morales.

Indeed, in Thursday's press conference in which he announced the annulment of the polling stations, Fujimori introduced attorney Torres as the legal strategist.

This was the second worst news

about her court case that Keiko Fujimori received.

On June 4, just 48 hours before the ballot on Sunday, June 6, Judge Víctor Zúñiga rejected a request from Keiko and others involved in the case,

to dismiss the closure of the tax investigation.

With this maneuver, the defendants, including the presidential candidate, intended to postpone the start of the oral trial.

But they did not succeed.

For all this, it was urgent for Fujimori to win the elections: if he became president,

the judicial process against him would be suspended

until the end of his term in 2026.

This is one of the powerful reasons why the daughter of the condemned former president Alberto Fujimori urgently needed to defeat the very modest teacher and peasant Pedro Castillo.

As the results go, the victory appears elusive for Keiko and they bring her closer to the action of justice,

which seeks to return her to prison.

PB

Look also

The Lava Jato prosecutor requested the arrest of Keiko Fujimori for violating the conditions of his probation

Peru sent a note of diplomatic protest for the anticipated greeting of Alberto Fernández to Pedro Castillo