World

Peru Will Go To The Polls Again

April 8, 2000 / 11:36 PM EDT / AP

Amid allegations of fraud, Peruvian election officials announced Wednesday that the presidential election will go to a second round.

President Alberto Fujimori fell just shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff for an unprecedented third term, and so must face challenger Alejandro Toledo in a run- off election.

Officials said that after counting 97.68 percent of Sunday's ballots, Fujimori had 49.84 percent compared to 40.31 percent for his challenger, economist-turned-candidate Alejandro Toledo.

Immediately after Sunday’s elections, fraud was on the lips of Peruvians in the capital streets and world leaders had cautioned Fujimori not to claim a first-round victory.

"We don't have a lot of confidence in the voting process either. It is clear that there has been a lot of irregularities during the campaign and during the day of the vote," British Ambassador Roger Hart said Wednesday.

Independent monitoring organizations in Peru had said that a first-round victory by Fujimori—which most pre-election polls suggested was unlikely— would be powerful evidence that fraud had taken place.

Officials said after counting more than half the ballots that Fujimori had 49.6 percent, compared to Alejandro Toledo's 40.6. That defied exit polls and unofficial vote tallies by independent monitors that indicated he would not reach the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff.

The first results were made public at midday Monday, more than 12 hours later than election officials had promised, prompting suspicion of dirty play.

"They took too long to count the ballots," said Renzo Lopez, a 28-year-old manager of a food wholesale company. "That delay gave them the time to manipulate the numbers."

Those suspicions exploded in a violent protest by some 4,000 people outside the presidential palace early Monday. Later in the day, Peruvians huddled in large groups in the main plaza across from the palace debating whether the fix was already in.

Fujimori rejected the findings of the exit polls and election monitors, but Toledo said that the electoral process had lost all credibility.

Toledo said his political group would refuse to recognize the election board's final count "no matter what the outcome." The vote was expected to continue filtering in during the week.

Opinion polls had showed a majority of Peruvians believed fraud would play a part in the election going into Sunday's ballot.

Accusations that Peruvian election authorities helped oversee the forgery of more than 1 million signatures to register his candidacy have already drawn calls from the U.S. State Department for an investigation.

For months, opposition candidates accused Fujimori and his military intelligence service of disrupting rallies with rock-throwing thugs, sponsoring lurid tabloid newspaper attacks and blocking access to television and radio. International monitors aso said Fujimori used government funds and food aid programs to rally support—charges he denied.

Roncagliolo said monitors had discovered pre-filled ballots favoring Fujimori during Sunday's vote and that an independent elections monitoring organization’s electricity and phone lines were cut and that its computer system was attacked by a mysterious virus.

Pollster Giovanna Penaflor cautioned that early returns were most likely from Lima, Fujimori's stronghold, and that later returns from other cities could show a decline in the president's performance.

But the early results did not include isolated rural areas, also considered pro-Fujimori because of his government's heavy investment in schools, health clinics and market roads.

After 10 years in power, the 61-year-old leader still has support from a wide segment of Peruvians grateful to him for defeating the Maoist Shining Path insurgency and halting hyperinflation and the economic chaos of the 1980s.

"You don't think that Colombia wouldn't love to have a Fujimori to take care of its guerrilla problem?" said Juan Carlos Cardenas, a 49-year-old fish vendor who rejected the fraud allegations. "He made Peru livable again."

But Toledo, who battled his way out of poverty in an Andean village to become an international economist, has cut into Fujimori's bedrock support among the poor, capitalizing on a deep two-year recession. The 54-year-old former World Bank official has promised to create at least 400,000 jobs by lowering taxes to spur business investment.