translated from Spanish: Keiko Fujimori’s party will try again to validate petitions for annulment declared inadmissible

The legal adviser of the Peruvian political party Fuerza Popular, led by the far-right candidate Keiko Fujimori, has announced his intention to challenge his petitions for the annulment of acts declared inadmissible by the Special Electoral Juries (JEE) for having entered after the deadline. Fujimori’s party had presented the JNE with nullity actions in 802 polling stations nationwide for irregularities that it has perceived during the elections, and that represent some 200,000 votes that could be key to the final result of last week’s presidential elections. With 99.86 percent of the vote, in a tight recount that distances the two candidates by a narrow margin, the leftist candidate of Free Peru, Pedro Castillo, would have collected 50.14 percent of the vote during the second round of the presidential elections, while his rival Fujimori would have won 49.85 percent of the vote. The Peruvian electoral body had decided on Friday morning to extend the deadline — until 8:00 p.m. — with the aim of receiving appeals for annulments from both Free Peru and The Popular Force, although a plenary session was held in the afternoon to evaluate the decision. With three votes in favor and one against, the JNE decided not to continue with the extension of the deadline, which had already ended on Wednesday night, after which “any request should be considered untimely,” according to the Peruvian media ‘La República’. The adviser, Julio César Castiglioni, explained that the Popular Force party is not contesting because they have a respect for electoral bodies, but because “there is a right.” We do so not because we want to distort the popular will, but because we believe that it is our right, because we believe that there was a bad intention to distort the popular will,” he said in statements collected by Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). The Electoral Observation Mission (EOM) of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Peru has ruled out on Friday that there are “serious irregularities” in the process of the Peruvian presidential elections and has called to respect the “legal times” of the same. The team, led by former Paraguayan Foreign Minister Ruben Ramirez Lezcano, has presented its preliminary report made after its time on the ground in the second round of the presidential elections held on Sunday. In that report, the mission said it had observed “a positive electoral process” in which there had been “substantial improvements between the first and second rounds”.

Original source in Spanish