Peru’s ultraconservative presidential hopeful Rafael Lopez Aliaga on Friday accused electoral authorities of a coup, claiming, without providing proof, that they were rigging the results of April 12 elections.
Nearly a month after they went to the polls, Peruvians are still waiting to know the final results, with legal challenges causing long delays to the count.
Lopez Aliaga, Lima’s former mayor, has repeatedly claimed that the election was fraudulent and called for it to be annulled. But he has produced no evidence.
“A coup d’etat is taking place in Peru, a coup d’etat against democracy,” he told reporters on Friday.
With nearly 99 per cent of the ballots counted, no candidate has an outright majority, meaning the election will go to a run-off between the two top candidates on 7 June.
Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the polarising ex-president Alberto Fujimori, led the first round with 17.1 per cent.
Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight race for second with leftist ex-minister Roberto Sanchez, who leads his rival by 20,000 votes.
Lopez Aliaga claimed that electoral authorities were preparing to unveil a second-round line-up consisting of two people who are not legitimate.
“We will not recognise the results if this situation remains,” he threatened.
In April, a record 35 candidates ran for president of the chronically unstable Andean nation, which has burnt through eight presidents in the past decade, four of whom were impeached.
Lopez Aliaga, a Christian nationalist widely known as ‘Porky’ for his self-professed resemblance to the rotund cartoon character Porky Pig, campaigned as a hardliner on crime and migration.
The election was marked by delays in the delivery of election materials in Lima, which forced authorities to reopen some polling stations the following day.
The European Union’s election observer mission nonetheless deemed the election to be free and fair.
