schema:articleBody
| - Peru's presidential vote, pitting right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori against leftist rival Pedro Castillo, was a "positive electoral process" in which "serious irregularities" were not detected, the Electoral Observation Mission of the Organization of American States said Friday. "The Mission has not detected serious irregularities," said the preliminary report of the group headed by former Paraguayan foreign minister Ruben Ramirez. The final result of the vote is not yet known, five days after the poll. But Castillo has already cast himself as the victor, while Fujimori claims fraud and has asked Peru's National Electoral Tribunal (JNE) to annul the results from more than 800 polling stations, the equivalent of 200,000 votes. The OAS mission "observed a positive electoral process, in which substantive improvements were recorded between the first and second rounds," said the report from the Washington-based regional organization. It also called for "candidates not to be proclaimed winners until all the challenges have been resolved," as final vote-counting has been slow due to delays in the delivery of ballots from rural and jungle areas, and from abroad -- where one million of the country's 25 million eligible voters live. In the latest count of Sunday's runoff, Castillo was ahead by some 60,000 votes, or 50.1 percent of the ballots. cm/fj/lda/acb/jm
|