Readers of my weblog know, that in Peru was election weekend. The results for the presidential race are surprising. Ollanta Humala wins, which for some time has been predicted. But for second place it’s still unclear whether Lourdes Flores or Alan García will take it. This is important, because the top two contenders will go on to the second round.
According to the latest numbers of today, Monday, 5pm Peruvian time with 75.64 percent of the votes counted, Humala gets 29.65%, García 24.95% and Lourdes 24.69% (source). Lourdes and Alan have switched the second/third place a few times.
In my opinion a second round with Humala and Alan would be the worst result possible. Alan has proven that he is a bad president and Humala doesn’t exactly sound promising either. But many Peruvians don’t trust Lourdes because she has strong links to big business.
The evangelicals are glad, that Humberto Lay, an evangelical pastor, did better than many expected. His party gets about three seats in congress. It’s the only new party without a serious presidential candiate which gets new seats. There will be six parties with representation in the congress. Of this, three have presidential hopefuls (APRA of Alan, Unión por el Perú for Humala and Unidad Nacional for Lourdes), and two parties represent former presidents (Alianza por el futuro which wants Alberto Fujimori back and Frente de centro for Valentín Paniagua). Not much can be said about congress representation, though, because just about 14 percent of the votes have been counted.
My sources for following the elections are:
- Official Web site of the ONPE (Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales)
- Peru Election 2006 Blog of the University of British Columbia
- Peru.com
- Findory search for Peru
I'll keep you posted.