Supporters of Peru’s President-elect Pedro Pablo Kuczynski cheer during his victory announcement in Lima on Thursday.
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Fujimori originally enjoyed a comfortable lead over Kuczynski, especially when she won the first round of voting in April.
“We’d said it was going to be 3 percent”.
Although the main leftist alliance didn’t qualify for the runoff, it played a huge role helping Kuczynski get elected by staging an anti-Fujimori protest on the eve of vote that was the largest demonstration seen in a generation.
Peru is the world’s largest producer of cocaine.
Kuczynski had proposed a 3 percent deficit in 2017-2019, up from the 2.5 percent target for this year, to fund a stimulus spurt and a gradual lowering of sales taxes that his critics said threatened Peru’s long-term fiscal standing. The electoral commission announced Kuczynski won 50.12% of the voters over Fujimori’s 49.88%.
Still being counted are the last ballots cast by an estimated 885,000 Peruvians eligible to vote overseas.
About 50,000 ballots must first be settled by an electoral court before a victor can be officially declared.
Some 152 bundles of ballots remained under review by authorities late on Thursday.
Kuczynski, once a Fujimori supporter, campaigned aggressively against his younger opponent, telling supporters at a rally last week in Lima that “Peru is on the threshold of becoming a narco-state”.
Keiko Fujimori concedes defeat in Lima, Peru, Friday, June 10, 2016.
One way to possibly unlock support in congress is releasing Alberto Fujimori, who is serving a 25-year sentence for corruption and supporting death squads during the 1990s.
Such allegations about key members of Fujimori’s team seem to have ruined her attempts to distance herself from her father’s legacy. A spokesman earlier said she would fight to the end.
Fujimori conceded defeat on Friday afternoon.
Kuczynski’s victory leaves little time to celebrate as his party currenty holds only 18 of 130 seats in Congress.
It would be Fujimori’s second consecutive narrow loss in a presidential run-off race and a further blow to the populist politics that have fallen out of favor in the region. The Fujimori family has a dark past.
“The country has witnessed a campaign that promoted clashes between Peruvians, that sought and managed to awaken hatred and fanaticism”, she said while surrounded by lawmakers from her Popular Force party.
A former prime minister, Kuczynski dismissed Fujimori’s tough stance on crime, including promises to build prisons high in the Andes to isolate prisoners, as myopic and cruel.
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Jaime Reusche, a senior analyst for Moody’s, said Kuczynski’s more conservative fiscal target was encouraging.
