Left-wing Humala claims election victory in Peru

Ollanta Humala has declared himself the winner of Peru’s runoff presidential poll, after an official but preliminary vote count gave the leftist candidate a slight lead over rival Keiko Fujimori.

Peru’s national election board (ONPE) had processed more than 80% of all ballots early on Monday morning and would offer official results later in the day. It also said 85% of Peru’s 20 million voters had participated in the poll.

“The Peruvian people have made their verdict. It has been a civic act and I thank you for the vote of confidence,” Humala said in a short speech at a Lima hotel where his campaign team awaited the results of the vote on Sunday.

According to Venezuelan television Telesur, candidate Keiko Fujimori quietly left the hotel where her camp had assembled. The 35-year-old congresswoman is the daughter of disgraced ex-president Alberto Fujimori.

Unofficial results based on exit polls by the trusted polling agency Ipsos Apoyo and the independent election watchdog Transparencia also gave Humala a narrow victory.

Peru’s ONPE election authority said the remaining vote counts would come from rural areas and overseas. Humala won the first round of the presidential elections on April 10, drawing the majority of his support from the rural and mostly indigenous highlands.

Casting moderate image

Humala later addressed hundreds of supporters gathered in the capital city’s historic centre. After waving the Peruvian flag the former army commander told the cheering crowd he was renewing his promise to maintain the country’s recent economic growth while promoting social programmes.

“We have waited a long time, we have long wished for a government that is truly concerned with the poor,” Hulama said.

Comparisons with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, which includes their military backgrounds, were key to Humala’s defeat to President Alan Garcia in Peru’s last presidential elections.

The only candidate placed squarely on the left, Humala, a former army commander, has nonetheless made efforts to cast a more moderate image during this election contest.

By toning down his revolutionary rhetoric he also won the backing of former centrist president Alejandro Toledo, who was placed fourth in the first round of the elections.

Nobel Literature Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa also said he would vote for Humala.

Challenges ahead

During the run-up to next Sunday’s elections, Humala backed away from talk about a state-owned pension-fund system to replace Peru’s current private model.

However, analysts have predicted it will be difficult for Humala to pass the reforms he has promised, since Fujimori’s Peru 2011 party won almost one-third of the seats in Peru’s congress in April.

Talk of raising the minimum wage and imposing a windfall tax on the mining sector on Humala’s campaign trail has also made investors nervous.

Peru’s stock and currency markets swung wildly last week as polls suggested Humala was on pace to win, the Miami Herald reported.
 

Source 

France24.com