Pedro Castillo finally declared winner of Peru's presidential election

[Eugene]

Also: A Rural Teacher Wins Peru's Presidency After The Longest Electoral Count In 40 Years (Associated Press)

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Source: Washington Post

Pedro Castillo finally declared winner of Peru’s presidential election

By Simeon Tegel
July 19, 2021|Updated today at 9:46 p.m. EDT

LIMA, Peru — Pedro Castillo, the provincial schoolteacher who promised to restructure Peru’s economy to favor the poor, was confirmed Monday evening as the Andean country’s president-elect more than six weeks after the election.

Peru’s electoral agency certified the results of the June 6 runoff, giving the left-wing Castillo 50.13 percent of the vote over 49.87 percent for his hard-right opponent Keiko Fujimori. The two candidates were separated by just 44,000 votes out of nearly 19 million cast.

The result followed a deeply divisive election and a series of last-ditch legal challenges by Fujimori. Her lawyers made unsubstantiated claims of fraud in an effort to get out 200,000 votes thrown out.

Shortly before Peru’s national election tribunal declared the result, after dismissing the last of Fujimori’s appeals, she finally acknowledged Castillo’s triumph — even as she cast doubt on its validity. Fujimori, 46, said she would recognize him as president because “that is what the law and the constitution that I have sworn to defend order,” but then said his victory was “illegitimate” and that “the truth will come out.”

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/19/castillo-wins-peru-election/

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Source: Associated Press

A Rural Teacher Wins Peru's Presidency After The Longest Electoral Count In 40 Years

July 19, 2021 8:54 PM ET
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LIMA, Peru — Rural teacher-turned-political novice Pedro Castillo on Monday became the winner of Peru's presidential election after the country's longest electoral count in 40 years.

Castillo, whose supporters included Peru's poor and rural citizens, defeated right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori by just 44,000 votes. Electoral authorities released the final official results more than a month after the runoff election took place in the South American nation.

Wielding a pencil the size of a cane, symbol of his Peru Libre party, Castillo popularized the phrase "No more poor in a rich country." The economy of Peru, the world's second-largest copper producer, has been crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the poverty level to almost one-third of the population and eliminating the gains of a decade.

Historians say he is the first peasant to become president of Peru, where until now, Indigenous people almost always have received the worst of the deficient public services even though the nation boasted of being the economic star of Latin America in the first two decades of the century.

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Read more: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/19/1018145068/leftist-rural-teacher-pedro-castillo-declared-president-elect-in-peru

[luckone]

1. ++ " no more poor in a rich country "

The vote was so close I wish him well