Pedro Castillo is proclaimed president-elect of Peru

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leftist Pedro Castillo was proclaimed this Monday (19) president-elect of Peru, a month and a half after the elections he won over the right-wing Keiko Fujimori, who delayed her nomination with more than a thousand challenges in which she denounces an alleged “fraud” without any reliable evidence.

After declaring unfounded, the last legal appeals presented by Fujimori, the National Jury of Elections (JNE), endorsed the results of the June 6 vote, where Castillo obtained 50.12% of the valid votes, a narrow victory by only 44,263 votes ahead of Fujimori.

Castillo’s proclamation came eight days before the presidential changeover scheduled for July 28, the day on which Peru will celebrate 200 years of its independence and the current interim president, Francisco Sagasti, will hand over the presidency to Castillo, a rural teacher, originally from the northern Andean region of Cajamarca.

In the JNE plenary session held via videoconference, Dina Boluarte was also proclaimed vice-president.

Unlike his predecessors, Castillo will start his mandate with only one vice-president, since Vladimir Cerron, the leader and founder of the Marxist party Peru Libre, was invalidated as a candidate because he has a firm conviction for corruption, resulting from his term as governor of the central Andean region of Junin.

Among those invited to the brief session were Castillo himself, as well as the Prime Minister, Violeta Bermudez; the head of the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Piero Corvetto; and the head of the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status (Reniec), Carmen Velarde.

Also in attendance were the heads of the electoral observation missions of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union (EU), organizations that have endorsed the legitimacy of the Peruvian elections together with governments such as those of the United States and Canada, among other countries.