Indigenous call for Castillo to be declared winner

Peruvian Indigenous leaders called Friday for leftist Pedro Castillo to be confirmed as the country's next president amid the dispute over the results of a tight runoff.

Peru finished tallying votes Thursday but no winner was declared, with electoral authorities saying they were scrutinizing a small number of ballots amid unproven claims of possible vote tampering leveled by the apparent loser.

With votes from rural areas and Peruvian embassies abroad now fully in, Castillo maintained his narrow lead, with 50.2% of the votes against 49.8% for conservative Keiko Fujimori. The difference between the candidates was 70,774 votes.

Peru's electoral tribunal, which was expected to take a week or more to officially declare a winner, was evaluating 631 tally sheets, about half of which had been questioned by campaign representatives.

It was not clear how many votes were still up for grabs, but Fujimori said they could total at least 200,000.

At a news conference in Lima, leaders from Indigenous communities representing roughly 7 million people gathered to voice their displeasure Castillo has not been formally declared president.

"We believe the popular will should be respected," said Victor Maita Frisancho an Indigenous leader from Cusco.

Castillo supporters continued to rally outside his Free Peru party headquarters hoping for an official announcement.

Emotions had been running high even before Sunday's runoff election over what many people viewed as a cruel choice between two populists — Castillo, an outsider who many feared would upend Peru's free-market model largely based on mineral exports, and Fujimori, who is fighting allegations of corruption that could land her in jail alongside her father, former president Alberto Fujimori.

But with the passing of every hour, Fujimori's challenge seemed less likely to succeed, analysts said.

Her campaign had yet to substantiate claims of fraud at polling stations.

International election observers from the Organization of American States paid a visit Friday with Castillo in a home he is staying at while he waits on the results.

"There should be peace and calm while we wait for the results the election authorities release," said Ruben Ramirez, Chief of the Organization of American States' election observer mission. "The candidate is willing to wait for those results in peace and calm for all of Peruvian society."

Peru's electoral system is considered one of the most robust in Latin America, having been tested in a string of recent elections, including the 2016 vote, when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski defeated Fujimori by an even smaller margin of votes.

All the same, with the exception of fellow leftist leaders in Argentina and Bolivia, few heads of state had congratulated Castillo or recognized him as Peru's president-elect.

Amid the uncertainty, a Peruvian prosecutor investigating Fujimori for alleged money laundering requested said Thursday that she be jailed again for failing to abide by the terms of her parole granted over a year ago.

Fujimori was released last year after spending more than a year in jail as part of a probe into millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions she allegedly received from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

A group of 20 lawyers filed a lawsuit Friday against Fujimori for attempting to suppress Peruvian votes.