Peru’s Presidential Election Cliffhanger Continues as the Very Last Votes Get Counted

Ex-Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has won the majority of votes with all ballots counted in Peru’s photo-finish presidential election, officials said Thursday, but the official result will depend on a handful of challenged ballots.

The Oxford-trained economist known as “PKK” maintained his razor-thin edge over Fujimori, the daughter of jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori: 50.12 percent to 49.88 percent.

Kuczynski tweeted “It’s time to work together for the future of our country”, in a thank you to the country.

Peru’s outgoing President Ollanta Humala extended his best wishes to the president-elect, as did Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet and Colombian leader Juan Manuel Santos. That’s a margin of less than 42,000 votes in more than 17 million.

“This virtual verdict, we take with a lot of modesty”. However, 0.2 percent of ballots had been questioned and could not be counted.

The daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto, won the first round and polls had suggested that she had a comfortable lead in the second leg.

Dozens of supporters of Fujimori have held demonstrations outside the electoral board to denounce what they said were fraud.

But right-wing populist Fujimori refuses to concede, for now.

Fujimori, who became her father’s first lady at 19 when he divorced her mother, had always been the favorite to win the election, thanks in part to the popularity of the family name in provinces where his government built schools and cracked down on the bloody Shining Path insurgency.

Kuczynski has less support among poorer voters but “anti-Fujimoristas” flocked to him.

Three days after Sunday’s runoff election, the race to lead one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies was still too close to officially call, even though 99.5 percent of the ballots had been counted.

On the campaign trail, Fujimori tried to distance herself from the controversial policies and actions of her father, who is now serving a 25-year sentence for graft and human rights abuses during his 1990-2000 rule.

He then embarked on a career in business and also served as finance minister twice and prime minister once under former President Alejandro Toledo.