The leftist candidate calls for annulment of overseas vote after detecting procedural changes and manipulation. 

On Tuesday, Presidential candidate Roberto Sanchez denounced an electoral fraud in progress and warned that he would not recognize far-right politician Keiko Fujimori as Peru’s president. 

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At a news conference, Sanchez argued for the annulment of overseas voting, saying the electoral rule was changed before the runoff and that ballots were not adequately protected until their arrival in Lima. 

The annulment of that vote, he said, would confirm that he was the winning candidate and the top vote-getter within national territory. 

According to a tally with 99.71% of votes counted, Fujimori had 50.11% of valid votes against Sanchez’s 49.88%. The difference between the two candidates was just 40,468 votes. 

However, the percentages reverse if overseas votes are subtracted, giving Sanchez 50.11% of the valid votes with 40,925 more ballots than Fujimori, who registers 49.88%. 

Overseas voting was “gravely” affected when consulates were exempted from digitally sending overseas voting results and were instead required to physically ship the tally sheets to Lima for counting, Sanchez maintains, adding that this procedure came at the request of Foreign Affairs Minister Carlos Pareja, a politician clearly linked to Fujimorism. 

The Together for Peru party leader, who ran on behalf of imprisoned former President Pedro Castillo, stated that the transfer of tally sheets to Lima was done without guarantees to prevent manipulation. 

The candidate asserted Tuesday that “in that affectation, there has been a manipulation of that vote in favor of Keiko Fujimori’s Popular Force party,” Sanchez said. 

“This serious irregularity constitutes a fraud in progress because the voting carried out by consular offices continues to be counted. Currently, however, we believe it is the National Elections Jury (JNE) that must stop this action, since the intangibility of electoral regulations has been transgressed,” he added. 

“If the JNE does not resolve in the interest of legal certainty, that fraud will have been consummated. Under those conditions of transgression of the rules, we will not recognize the government of Ms. Fujimori, and we will carry out the democratic struggle within the framework of the law and the Constitution,” Sanchez warned and called for mobilizing in the streets. 

The leftist politician made an appeal to civil society and democratic forces “to recover democracy for Peru and not have five more years of the capture of democracy and institutions.” 

At the press conference, Sanchez emphasized that the provision that prevented the transmission of overseas results “is the evident and factual proof, which needs no further demonstration, that the nature of the electoral process has been broken.”

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

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