MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Peru's Sánchez alleges fraud and says he won't recognize a Fujimori government

Until a few days ago, Sánchez had avoided using the word fraud. This time he held that there are reasons to question the validity of the votes cast abroad

The presidential candidate of Juntos por el Perú, Roberto Sánchez, hardened his rhetoric on the runoff on Tuesday, alleging an alleged “fraud in progress” and announcing that he will not recognize a possible government of right-wing Keiko Fujimori. At a press conference in Lima, the left-wing candidate also called a protest for Saturday in defense of what he considers the popular will expressed at the ballot box.

Until a few days ago, Sánchez had avoided using the word fraud. This time he held that there are reasons to question the validity of the votes cast abroad and blamed the Foreign Ministry and the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE). According to the candidate, the main irregularity is that the overseas tally sheets were not digitized immediately after the vote, as they were in the first round, which in his view weakened the safeguards of the process. “We have the legitimate right to doubt and to believe that a manipulation of that vote took place to benefit the Fuerza Popular party,” he said. His group filed a complaint against Foreign Minister Carlos Pareja for alleged electoral fraud.

Sánchez asked the National Jury of Elections (JNE) to suspend the count while the appeals filed are resolved, and confirmed a request to annul the overseas vote, where more than 300,000 ballots were cast. If that request were to prosper, the result would be reversed: counting only the votes within the country, Sánchez would overtake Fujimori. “If the National Jury of Elections does not act in accordance with the law, that fraud will have been consummated,” he warned, anticipating that his party would resort to “patriotic and popular resistance.”

The authorities rejected the objections. The Foreign Ministry “categorically” denied any manipulation and explained that the suspension of the tally-sheet scanning application for the runoff was decided in coordination with ONPE owing to technical difficulties detected in the first round, without altering the Organic Election Law, and assured that all the tally sheets arrived intact at the central headquarters within 72 hours. The JNE, which called for calm, had already declared unfounded the earlier appeals by Juntos por el Perú, which had sought to annul 1,751 polling tables in Lima and 647 in the United States.

With the count at around 99.7%, Fujimori leads with 50.11% of valid votes against Sánchez's 49.88%, a difference of some 41,000 ballots. There is still no proclaimed winner: the JNE expects to proclaim the results in mid-July, so that the new president takes office on July 28, for the 2026-2031 term.