With 89.2 percent of the ballots counted from yesterday’s presidential runoff election in Peru, first-round winner and Gana Perú candidate Ollanta Humala leads first-round runner-up and Fuerza 2011 candidate Keiko Fujimori by a less than 3 percent margin.
Shortly after midnight yesterday, Humala declared victory in downtown Lima and delivered a speech to supporters in which he pledged to fulfill his commitments to the Peruvian people. Fujimori has vowed not to concede until Peru’s official electoral body, Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE), declares a winner. An ONPE interactive map shows Keiko winning in the capital Lima and surrounding areas as well as in northern coastal regions. Humala won by large margins in rural areas and in highland cities. Currently, Humala leads by nearly 375,000 votes out of roughly 14 million ballots counted.
If Humala’s lead holds, his victory would signify a rebuke of outgoing President Alan García’s economic policies, which are credited with sustaining high growth levels, but also criticized for doing little to combat poverty and economic inequality. A survey last month revealed that only 22 percent of Peruvians believed that the García model should be replicated by his successor.
Analysts say Humala’s success at the polls in some of Peru’s closest-ever elections is due to the excitement his campaign generated as opposed to Fujimori’s candidacy which some say “lacked feeling.” Also, Humala largely avoided talking last week about his controversial economic policies, choosing instead to focus on combatting poverty and corruption.
This morning, the Bolsa de Valores de Lima (Lima Stock Exchange) temporarily suspended operations after its value declined by 8.7 percent mere moments after opening for morning trades.
