Left-wing presidential candidate Pedro Castillo won the first electoral round in Peru today, while three of his rivals fought for second place in the final, according to polling day poll.
Castillo outperformed neoliberals Hernando de Soto and Keiko Fujimori by 11.9 per cent and populist aspirant Yunhe Liccano by 11 per cent, who will have to wait for the official numbers to see who will compete with the candidate of the Peru Libre party.
They were succeeded by left-wing politician Veronica Mendoza (8.8) and far-right candidate Rafael Lopez (2.5).
Castillo, who usually attends his rallies on a horse, achieved first place thanks to what one analyst described as a surprise mare in the final stage, because a week ago no one saw him with the possibility of a second round.
His rise was favored because the “ right-wing guns ” (attacks) on the Internet, the press and open confrontations were focused on Veronica Mendoza, who until Castillo’s rise had the greatest prospects on the left (progressive) side of the political spectrum.
After learning the results of the poll, to the joy of his followers, the Peruvian candidate called Liber to calm and said that he will announce himself when the electoral authorities provide official information, which will be in the coming days, when calculating the National Office of Electoral Operations (ONPE).
“People are wise, identical to people who were born from the same city,” said the rural teacher ally of the “Peru Liber” party, noting that the result of the affirmation is a sign of popular sentiment.
Castillo thanked the support of his fellow teachers, whose radical faction of the Teachers’ Union gained notoriety in 2017 when he led a strike of county teachers against the government of then-President Pedro Pablo Kuchinsky.
In response to a question about the calm in which he obtained the result of the poll on polling day, he said that he would have acted with the same serenity had he ranked sixth in the poll.
Castillo had been linked in previous years with two parties outside the left, Peru Possibly, from the center at the time Alejandro Toledo, and Alianza Barra El Progreso, to conservative businessman Cesar Acuña.
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