Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former finance minister with Oxford and Princeton degrees, is the apparent victor of Peru’s closely contested presidential contest, squeaking out the narrowest of victories over Keiko Fujimori, 41-year-old daughter of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori.
Advertisement
Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, has 49.9 percent while Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has 50.1.
The office is expected to announce him the official victor in the next few days and the final result may vary slightly because 0.22 percent of ballots are being reviewed by special electoral courts.
She is the daughter of Peru’s former President, Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for crimes against humanity.
Kuczynski can not be named president-elect until the electoral college makes the vote official, the election office said.
“There’s a lot of work to do. It’s still not completely official, but we’re close”, he told journalists outside his house in an upscale neighborhood of the capital, Lima, as he headed to his campaign headquarters.
Kuczynski has pledged to ease investment restrictions with an eye to bolstering Peru’s economy, which he sees as too dependent on ore exports to China, and has called for the development of new market sectors, including agriculture and tourism. Peruvians living outside the South American country, majority in the United States, turned out massively for Fujimori in the 2011 election but with 90 percent of their vote already counted they appear to have favored Kuczynski this time around.
Fujimori did not immediately comment.
The results were being transported partly by river, with a security escort to keep them safe from the drug traffickers and guerrilla fighters hiding out in the region. “Many Peruvians feel that the train has passed them by, but we want everyone to get on board right away”.
Locked in a neck-and-neck race for much of the campaign’s two months, Kuczynski edged past 41-year-old Fujimori last week. The presidential candidate is Keiko Fujimori, who is now part of the country’s closest electoral contest in years.
Famed for its ancient Incan cities high in the Andes mountains and its fusion-fueled cuisine, symbolized by the refreshing raw fish dish ceviche, Peru has been one of Latin America’s best-performing economies.
In 2009, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of authorizing the operation of a death squad responsible for killing civilians. But the 2011 presidential election was won by Ollanta Humala.
A almost complete ballot count shows Fujimori, the daughter of a jailed former president, trailing former investment banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski by tens of thousands of votes.
Kuczynski, son of a Jewish doctor from Germany, studied at Oxford and Princeton.
A former economy minister, he has a long career in business and finance.
Advertisement
His American wife is a cousin of Hollywood actress Jessica Lange.
