Castillo’s rival in the race for the presidency, Keiko Fujimori, is seeking to scrap the impoverished Andean regions that Castillo won on a large scale, changing the outcome of the official account of the National Office for Electoral Processes (ONPE) in her favour.
All his requests for annulment were rejected by the electoral courts of the provinces, for being late or for not complying with the reasons specified by the electoral law for cancellation, which is difficult to achieve due to the principle of protecting the vote.
In the 2011 and 2016 general elections, for example, the number of cancellation requests barely exceeded twenty at a time.
Faced with this legal wall, the battalion of lawyers serving the candidate, along with strong media support and retired military personnel, appealed to the National Elections Jury and the highest electoral court began their analysis.
However, Fujimori also insists that JNE delve into their complaints and seek and find reasons to check them or ignore them, despite the fact that there is no evidence stage in the process and evidence must accompany the complaint.
Fujimori’s passion, according to election experts, equates to asking a judge to take charge of the investigation stage, and also faces the fact that stages and deadlines for electoral justice are immutable, among other things to avoid delays and uncertainties like the present one.
On the other hand, the Diwan was covered with accusations and utterances from the candidate’s followers for refusing the lawyers’ request, which bears all evidence that it was a delay maneuver, to grant them the electoral register.
The record is in the custody of the National Identity Registry (Reniec) because it must protect the confidentiality of the personal data it contains, according to the agency.
Fujimori’s lawyer’s gambit extended to requesting “habeas corpus data”, the right to access public information, because they want to collect voter signatures to substantiate their claim with false signatures of polling station members in hundreds of electoral records, which may further delay the cancellation process and alter Election schedule.
These and other alleged irregularities are normal in the electoral process, and many citizens with whom dubious signatures correspond have made it clear that they are genuine.
But election experts point out that Fujimori’s claims should have been submitted during the vote and recorded on the record so that they could be brought before the electoral justice system.
Fujimorism claims that it did not have enough representatives or that there was a hostile atmosphere for its members in the rural areas involved, although each electoral college had an attentive presence from ONPE, JNE, the attorney general’s office and even the armed forces and none reported complaints.
Moreover, on the night of June 6, polling day, the press reported a flawless election day, with some isolated, but clean incidents and no official from the Fujimori Fuerza Popular party requested that any table be voided during the elections.
That night, private pollster Ipsos, famous for being correct in its predictions for the elections in Peru, reported a quick count result, based on a sample of electoral records, which gave Castillo first place with 50, 2 percent compared to Fujimori’s 49.8, roughly the same Result after ONPE enumeration.
Only the next day, Fujimori denounced the alleged “signs of fraud”, citing some of them, such as the instructions to Peruvian Liber fighters to go to the polls too early to take advantage of the possibility of replacing polling station members who did not turn up, something traditional in Peru.
Prosecution’s improvisation was reflected in the fact that he asked his constituents to report possible wrongdoing. In addition, he enlisted competing expensive law firms to review voting records, more than 88,000, for reasons for the claim.
At the same time, he organized demonstrations in alleged defense of the vote and changed his allegations from supposed references to vote-rigging on tables on behalf of Castillo, to the questioning of ONPE and JNE, which trapped anti-Keiko protesters in the headlines. their homes to put pressure on them.
In addition, right-wing writer Mario Vargas Llosa and a group of unpopular former presidents of countries in the region, such as Bolivian Jorge Quiroga and Colombian Andres Pastrana, as well as Spain’s (far-right) Vox party, sponsored Fujimori. allegations.
Pastrana even reproduced the ‘fake news’ used for Fujimori and pressure came to statements from retired soldiers in favor of the defeated candidate’s claims in two polling rounds in 2011 and 2016.
One such statement merited the angry rejection of President Francisco Sagaste, who accused the former military of inciting incumbent leaders to breach constitutionalism, by demanding in a letter that they not recognize the office of president, whoever the JNE proclaimed if they did not agree with Fujimori’s decision. stimulate.
Analyst Mirko Lauer and other callers warned that there was a continuing risk of coup d’état, and to this was added a protective appeal by a retired judge close to Fujimori’s positions before the judiciary, to cancel the ballot because it was. “An old”.
Meanwhile, the claims of the second-placed candidate in the official vote count are allegations of vote theft of her own and anti-communist statements such as the demand to “save” Peru from a left-wing government.
His lawyers now assert, without controversy, that they have a right to know the truth about the elections, and that is why they will continue to file requests for the real purpose of delegitimizing the electoral process, even at the cost of promoting a coup, according to former Home Secretary Walter Alban.
“One day he will ask for birth certificates for polling station members,” Alban said, while other analysts are considering the possibility that those who do not comply with the official count result will delay the governor’s announcement as far as July 28, the constitutional date for the inauguration. .
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