Leftist Pedro Castillo finally confirmed as Peru’s next president

Leftwing candidate Pedro Castillo has finally been confirmed as Peru’s next president and will be sworn in to office next week after one of the longest and most bitter electoral battles in the country’s history.

The National Electoral Jury confirmed Castillo’s victory in a televised address on Monday night, more than six weeks after a second-round poll. Keiko Fujimori, Castillo’s only rival for the presidency, grudgingly acknowledged defeat, saying she would “recognise the results because that’s what the law and the constitution I swore to defend order”.

However, Fujimori described the JNE’s announcement as “illegitimate” and said that electoral fraud that she claimed tipped the vote in Castillo’s favour “will come to light”.

In a swipe at Castillo and Vladimir Cerrón, the hardline Marxist leader of his political party, Fujimori, the daughter of the country’s former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, warned that Peru was embarking on a dangerous new chapter.

“It will be difficult because communism doesn’t assume power only to then give it up,” she said. “But I am totally sure that the Peruvians will not allow Pedro Castillo and Vladimir Cerrón to turn Peru into Cuba or Venezuela.”

Peru’s electoral authorities said weeks ago that Fujimori lost the June 6 run-off by 44,000 votes, or a margin of 49.9 per cent to 50.1 per cent. The EU, the Organization of American States and the US described the elections as fair. Washington as far as calling the poll “a model of democracy in the region”.

But in an echo of Donald Trump in last year’s US presidential election, Fujimori insisted the victorious Perú Libre party had cheated. Her lawyers bombarded the JNE with objections, forcing the body to painstakingly review ballot papers from across the country and delaying the formal announcement of the winner.

Analysts consulted by the Financial Times said the lawyers had produced some evidence of irregularities, but not enough to meaningfully affect the result.

“There is no evidence of fraud. Nothing,” said David Sulmont, professor of political science at Lima’s Pontifical Catholic University. “In a world in which everyone has a cell phone, if there was fraud it would have surfaced on social media by now and it hasn’t. Her narrative is 100 per cent fake news.”

Castillo, 51, is rural primary school teacher who emerged from obscurity to win the election by appealing to Peru’s poor, particularly in remote villages in the Andes and the Amazon basin. His campaign slogan — “no more poor people in a rich country” — resonated with many.

The prospect of his victory pushed Peru’s currency, the sol, to unprecedentedly low levels against the dollar. It has depreciated 9 per cent since Castillo emerged as a potential election winner in April despite repeated interventions from the central bank. Wealthy Peruvians have shifted money out of the country.

Castillo denies that he is a Marxist but his critics point to Cerrón’s influence over the party.

A Cuban-trained doctor who was barred from running himself because of a corruption conviction, Cerrón was the author of a notorious manifesto that praised Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It warned foreign companies in Peru that they would have to hand over most of their profits to the state and would face expropriation if they refused.

Castillo has since distanced himself from the document and moved closer to more moderate leftists, although he insisted that he would try to rewrite the country’s 1993 constitution.

His party will have only 37 of the 130 seats in Peru’s fragmented Congress and may find it hard to govern. The country’s constitution also lends itself to politicians impeaching the president — Castillo will be the fifth leader in five years.

He will take office on July 28, the 200th anniversary of Peru’s independence from Spanish rule.