Pedro Castillo has been declared as Peru’s President-Elect, nearly two months after the country’s election.
Castillo narrowly beat Keiko Fujimori in a second-round runoff, beating her by fewer than 50 000 votes out of nearly 18-million cast.
Following initial results which showed Castillo had narrowly emerged as the winner, Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, claimed that there had been electoral fraud. Although there was little evidence of fraud and international observers gave the election a thumbs up, the electoral authority investigated Fujimori’s claims, and found this week that they had no basis.
Castillo ran on a populist platform, promising to nationalise mines as well as to look into reintroducing the death penalty in a bid to tackle crime in the country. It remains to be seen whether Castillo, a former teacher, will follow through with these promises.
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