Latin America: Week in Review, Peru
Peru’s Ollanta Humala Wins First-Round Presidential Election, Will Likely Face Fujimori In Runoff
April 11, 2011 By Staff
Peruvian Presidential Candidate Ollanta Humala. Photo by José Cruz/ABr.
Today in Latin America
Top Story — Leftwing nationalist Ollanta Humala will probably face conservative Keiko Fujimori in a second-round election for the Peruvian presidency, scheduled for June 5.
A quick count of Sunday’s ballots found Humala in the lead with 31.7 percent of the votes, according to the Associated Press. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of authoritarian ex-President Alberto Fujimori, came in second place with 23.3 percent.
Liberal economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski placed third with 18.3 percent. Former President Alejandro Toledo led in the polls for most of the campaign, but plummeted in recent weeks and came in fourth out of five.
Opinion polls backed up the results of the unofficial count, AP reports, but the Peruvian electoral authorities have yet to officially announce a winner. At the time of writing, Peru’s electoral authority had counted 68.7 percent of the votes and Humala enjoyed a comfortable lead. Second place, however, still seemed disputable, with Fujimori barely topping Kuczynski by one percentage point, according to Peruvian daily El Comercio.
Polling agency Ipsos Apoyo expects Fujimori’s lead to increase as the vote count draws to a close.
Peruvian law requires candidates to score over half of the valid votes to win a presidential election in the first round. Because no candidate will win the election outright, the two top candidates will face each other in a run off.
Headlines from the Western Hemisphere
North America
- The Head of Public Security in the central Mexican state of Morelos was removed from his post after the murder two weeks ago of seven young people in the state.
- Prosecutors in the border city of Tijuana found the human bones and teeth from pits once used by a man known as the “stew-maker,” who confessed to dissolving the bodies of drug cartel victims.
Caribbean
- Cuba denounced as a “farce” the acquittal in the United States of Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent who is accused of terrorist attacks against the island.
- Freed Cuban political prisoner Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, who was recognized as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, complained in an interview on Sunday about the treatment he received from the Spanish government.
Central America
- A family court in Guatemala approved the divorce of President Álvaro Colom and his wife Sandra Torres.
- Five people were killed and 12 others wounded in an attack on a bar in the eastern Guatemalan city of Chiquimula, authorities said Friday.
Andes
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was in Colombia Saturday to meet President Juan Manuel Santos and Honduran leader Porfirio Lobo.
- Human rights conditions worsened over the past year in Venezuela, but improved in Colombia, the US State Department said Friday in an annual review.
- Peru’s government cancelled a vast copper mining project after clashes between police and protesters left three people dead earlier this week.
Southern Cone
- Uruguayan Parliament is considering legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, according to Chile’s El Mercurio newspaper.
- Standing at 102 feet, Brazil completed the world’s largest Lego Tower in the parking lot of a shopping centre in Sao Paulo.
- A man in Argentina was arrested carrying more than 600 snakes and other reptiles packed in the luggage compartment of a bus.
Image: José Cruz/ABr @ Wikicommons.
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