Sanchez warns he will ‘not recognize’ Fujimori’s victory in Peru’s election | Election News

Peru’s presidential candidate Roberto Sanchez has criticized his country’s recent election as “fraudulent”, rejecting results that show rival Keiko Fujimori narrowly ahead.

On Tuesday, Sanchez held a press conference calling for protests over the weekend.

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He also said that he would not approve of Fujimori’s presidency, accusing the government of manipulating foreign votes to favor the right-wing government.

“We cannot accept this government and we will declare a political and social war – a movement of patriots,” Sanchez wrote on social media. post after it happened.

Sanchez’s comments are the latest sign of turmoil in Peru’s troubled political system, which has seen nine presidents in power in the past decade.

They are also the epitome of a razor-thin edge in ongoing polls.

On June 7, the left wing Sanchez met the right wing Fujimori in a chase. With more than 99.7% of the votes counted as of Tuesday, Fujimori is leading, with 50.11% support.

Sanchez, meanwhile, won 49.89 percent of the vote. About 40,687 votes separated the two.

Government officials say they want to complete the vote count within 30 days of the election, in preparation for the inauguration of the next president on July 28, Peru’s independence day.

But it seems that the swearing-in ceremony will be controversial. At a press conference on Tuesday, Sanchez raised questions about the legitimacy of foreign votes.

Peru established about 2,506 foreign voters, and the government estimates that foreign voters number more than 1.2 million people, or about 4.4 percent of the country’s total voters.

But Sanchez has criticized a recent decision by Peru’s electoral authorities, opposing a law allowing ballots in overseas polling stations to be searched and photographed.

On Tuesday, he said that the change in the process led to the vote being tampered with, which led to Fujimori’s “fraudulent profit”.

“This illegality renders the elections held in consular offices null and void, as they undermine the legal validity of the votes cast by Peruvians abroad,” Sanchez wrote on social media.

He asked the National Jury of Elections (JNE), the country’s electoral court, to “declare that the elections of June 7 that were held in the offices of the embassies of Peruvians abroad”.

His official petition looked at the results of the election from 119 Consulates in Peru where the voting took place, “on the grounds that the electoral process was seriously disrupted”.

No evidence was presented to support his claim that the policy changes caused the Sanchez campaign to “steal” votes, as he claimed.

Fujimori, meanwhile, painted Sanchez as the ultimate loser. “I believe this is a political problem,” he told reporters this week.

Allegations of fraud, however, have become frequent in Peru’s elections in recent years.

Even Fujimori himself has said this in the past. In 2021, he reached his third presidential election, but the results of the elections showed that he was falling behind the left-wing candidate Pedro Castillo by a narrow margin.

He responded to the incident by accusing the opposition of trying to “distort and delay the results” and leading the public to denounce “fraud”.

Allegations of fraud also surfaced after the first vote on April 12. Long lines and delays in vote distribution raised questions about voter turnout, and it took nearly a month for official results to be released.

In the first round, Sanchez was in a race for second place, a position that would guarantee him a place in the race.

But it is clear that he will go to the finals, the third runner-up, former Mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, denounced the results as fake.

After Sanchez denounced the false claims on Tuesday, the opposition explained what he said after the first vote, in which he promised to respect the results and preserve Peru’s democracy.

“I will respect the results. I will make this commitment to the country,” Sanchez told the reporter of Exitosa Noticias on June 5. “If the vote of the citizens declares us the winner, we will celebrate. If it says otherwise, we will accept it and at the same time we will put ourselves in the task of making our country Peru great.”

Sanchez, a member of Peru’s Congress from 2021, represented the leftist party Together for Peru (JP) in this year’s presidential race.

Although his campaign supported the rural and indigenous peoples of Peru, he faced controversy due to his relationship with former President Castillo, who is currently in prison on charges of treason and conspiracy. Sanchez was previously a minister in Castillo’s government.

Fujimori, meanwhile, was elected to the right-wing Popular Force party, which he founded in 2010.

His father, Alberto Fujimori, led Peru from 1990 to 2000, during which he dissolved the Peruvian Congress and Supreme Court, and wrote a new constitution in its place. His decisions in office – including campaigns against forced reproduction and extrajudicial killings – could lead to him being accused of human rights violations.

Keiko Fujimori, who was the first lady of her father, campaigned on a strong platform, under the slogan, “Peru is the system.”