MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peruvian presidential election has a winner, a run off date but no runner-up, yet

The former army officer Ollanta Humala waiting for his June rival

Former army officer and politically nationalist Ollanta Humala won the most votes in Peru’s presidential elections, though will need to wait for full results to know who he’ll face in a June runoff.

Humala won 26.9% in the first round of voting today, Peru’s electoral authority said after counting more than 43% of valid ballots cast. Former Finance Minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski trailed with 23.6%, while Congresswoman Keiko Fujimori had 21.8%. Former President Alejandro Toledo won 15.3%.

A quick count by Lima-based researcher Ipsos Apoyo suggested Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, will beat Kuczynski by four percentage points for the right to compete against Humala in a June 5 runoff. Humala won 31.2%, according to the same quick count of results at selected voting stations nationwide by Ipsos.

A candidate needs half of ballots cast to avoid a June 5 runoff against the second-place finisher.

Humala, 48, a one-time ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, lost the presidency to Alan Garcia by 5 percentage points in 2006. He has pledged to renegotiate a free trade agreement with the U.S. signed by Garcia and raise royalty fees on mining and gas production to boost social spending. While downplaying his ties to Chavez and muting the anti-capitalist rhetoric used in 2006, Humala’s campaign platform proposes increasing state control of the economy and drawing up a new constitution.

However Humala has also distanced himself from Chavez and has come closer to Brazil’s Lula da Silva and his successor in the presidency, Dilma Rousseff.

The surprise performance of Kuczynski could have received a late boost from an endorsement April 8 by Garcia’s APRA party. An adviser to New York-based fund manager Rohatyn Group, the 72-year-old Kuczynski twice served as finance minister during Toledo’s 2001 to 2006 presidency.

Garcia, 61, whose five-year mandate expires July 28, is banned by Peru’s constitution from seeking re-election. His party’s candidate, former Finance Minister Mercedes Araoz, quit the race in January.

“Ours is a message of inclusion,” Humala told reporters today outside his home in eastern Lima, after casting his vote. “The electoral process is a celebration of democracy. It’s not about confrontation and polarization. Once the president has been elected, we’ll all need to work together.”

Under President Garcia, Peru created 2.5 million jobs and had the first-ever investment-grade ratings from Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings. Nevertheless a third of Peruvians still live in poverty, most of them in the Andean highlands where support for Humala is strongest.

Fujimori, Toledo and Kuczynski support Garcia’s policies of promoting free trade and foreign investment.

Fujimori, 35, is the daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, who her supporters credit with laying the foundations of Peru’s economic boom. Like Humala, her support is strongest in the Andean highlands where nostalgia runs high for her father’s role stabilizing the economy in the 1990s and defeating a Marxist insurgency. The mother-of-two was elected to Congress in 2006 with more votes than any other candidate.