Peru's electoral body to rule on Fujimori's appeal Monday

Monday, June 14th 2021 - 10:00 UTC

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The jury's deliberations will be broadcast through Facebook

One week after the presidential runoff, leftwing candidate Pedro Castillo edged conservative Keiko Fujimori by around 70,000 votes to become Peru's new President. But he cannot celebrate still until the National Electoral Jury (JNE) rule's on a petition to nullify some 200,000 votes from his opponent.

Castillo is a rural teacher with a Marxist discourse, but a social conservative who is against policies such as abortion or same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, the right-wing Fujimori vindicates the legacy of her father, former President Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a sentence for crimes against humanity. She has reached the elections with open investigations for alleged illegal financing of her presidential campaigns of 2011 and 2016. She defends a continuity model based on capitalism.

Corruption, inequality of opportunities and the coronavirus pandemic divide Peruvians.

The minutes to which Fujimori has objected feature either errors in the sum of votes, are not legible or lack the signature of the polling station members, it was reported.

A plenum of the National Elections Jury (JNE) will review these issues Monday, June 14, starting at 9.30 am local time, according to the JNE's official Twitter account and will be broadcast via JNETV and through Facebook.

Fujimori's Fuerza Popular has contested 887 voting records, which represent almost 177,400 votes. If annulled, she would become the winner.

Other objections raised by Fujimori's legal team were the presence of siblings at the same polling station, alleged forged or missing signatures, and the fact that most of those irregularities have been spotted where Castillo's votes overwhelmingly surpassed those for Fujimori.

Miguel Torres, a spokesman for Fujimori's Fuerza Popular said that they were “evaluating with several criminal lawyers the actions that are going to be taken against the people who are involved, especially on the subject of theft of signatures [...] We are talking about people who pose as other people occupying their space or the space that the draw had given them.”