Berliner Tageblatt - Peru candidate demands vote annulment as count tightens

Lopez Aliaga, a fan of US President Donald Trump, is locked in a tight three-way race with a leftist candidate and a social democrat for second place in Sunday's vote.

The election runner-up wins a ticket to June's presidential run-off against conservative frontrunner Keiko Fujimori.

"I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void," said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. "If it is not declared null and void tomorrow, I will call for a nationwide protest."

The election ran into Monday in parts of the capital Lima because of delays in the supply of ballots and other materials, which prevented tens of thousands of people from casting their vote the day before.

Elections observers acknowledged the dysfunctional nature of the vote but said they saw no evidence of fraud.

Ultraconservative Lima former mayor Lopez Aliaga saw his lead over leftist ex-minister Roberto Sanchez and social democratic candidate Jorge Nieto shrink as the vote count continued.

With just over 80 percent of ballots counted, Fujimori -- the daughter of divisive former president Alberto Fujimori -- had about 17 percent.

Lopez Aliaga was on just over 13 percent, compared to more than 11 percent for Sanchez.

Projections from the Ipsos institute suggest that Sanchez is on course to reach the second round.

Addressing reporters, Lopez Aliaga repeated his fraud claims and called on the electoral commission to "act, declare this entire process null and void, or figure out how to resolve this."

In response to an AFP question, he confirmed that he was seeking the annulment of the vote and called on his supporters to take to the streets.

"Don't let them steal our future," he wrote on Facebook.

Hundreds of his supporters protested in Lima, carrying placards and chanting "fraud" and "we want new elections."

In an interview with AFP, Sanchez called for "the popular vote to be respected."

"One can win or be defeated. And that has to be accepted because those are the rules of the game," he said.

A record 35 candidates ran for president of the chronically unstable Andean nation, where four presidents have been impeached in the past 10 years.

- Ninth president in a decade -

The campaign was dominated by promises to tackle a surge in extortion and contract killings, and disillusionment with a political class widely seen as ineffectual and corrupt.

With no candidate winning the 50 percent of votes needed for outright victory, a second round of voting is planned in June.

Tens of thousands of people were unable to cast a ballot on Sunday because election materials arrived late or not at all.

Several polling stations reopened on Monday to allow them to have their say.

Political scientist Eduardo Dargent told AFP the logistics mess had "given arguments... to several people who will cry fraud or worse if they are not happy with the result."

Lopez Aliaga, a Christian nationalist widely known as "Porky" over his self-professed resemblance to rotund cartoon character Porky Pig, campaigned as a hardliner on crime and migration.

He suggested building penal colonies in the Amazon rainforest, surrounded by a "natural fence" of vipers.

- Sowing doubt -

Some voters told AFP the chaos undermined their faith in the democratic process.

"We don't know if the results are true," said Yeraldine Garrido, a 35-year-old receptionist in Lima.

"It's been a major democratic failure," Luis Gomez, a self-employed man of 60, said.

Police have detained one election official and raided a private contractor blamed for failing to deliver election materials on time.

The head of the European Union's election observer mission, Annalisa Corrado, said her team found no evidence of fraud.

Police have detained one election official and raided a private contractor blamed for failing to deliver election materials on time.

H.Seidel--BTB