LIMA, Peru — Peru’s national electoral tribunal has moved to formalize the timeline of the country’s tightly contested presidential election, issuing an official mandate on Monday requiring the nation’s electoral oversight body to wrap up all vote counting and name the two candidates advancing to the June runoff by mid-May.
The order establishes a firm May 15 deadline for the Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE), Peru’s national elections agency, to release the final, official vote tally and confirm which contenders will move forward to the second round of voting, scheduled for June 7. The runoff became a necessary step after the April 12 first round, which drew more than 30 presidential candidates, failed to produce any candidate who captured an outright majority of the popular vote. Peruvian electoral law requires a runoff between the top two finishers when no candidate secures more than 50% of ballots cast.
What has turned this process into a nail-biting, delayed count is the razor-thin gap separating the candidates vying for the second spot in the runoff. The first round was also marred by widespread procedural irregularities that forced election officials to extend voting at dozens of polling stations across the capital city of Lima for an extra day to accommodate voters who faced long delays and broken voting equipment.
As of the latest partial count, which includes 93.5% of all ballots cast, conservative leader Keiko Fujimori holds a clear lead with 17.05% of the vote, a position that makes her all but certain to advance to the June 7 runoff. The race for the second spot remains too close to call, however: nationalist congressman and former cabinet minister Roberto Sánchez — who served in the administration of imprisoned ex-President Pedro Castillo — currently holds second place with 12% of the vote, while ultraconservative former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaiga trails him by less than 0.1 percentage points, sitting at 11.91% of the vote.
Counting efforts are still ongoing because election officials are still processing hundreds of tally sheets arriving from remote, hard-to-reach rural regions across Peru, as well as ballots cast by Peruvian citizens living overseas at the nation’s consular missions. Hundreds of these tally sheets have also been formally challenged by independent electoral observers, triggering a mandatory review process that ONPE officials must complete before the final tally can be certified.
The winner of this election will become Peru’s ninth president in just 10 years, capping a period of unprecedented political instability in the Andean nation. The incoming president will succeed interim President José María Balcázar, who was appointed to the role in February after his predecessor, another interim leader, was removed from office over sweeping corruption allegations just four months into his temporary term.