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Pedro Castillo awaits proclamation after right-wing setbacks in Peru
Lima, June 26 (RHC)-- The virtual president-elect of Peru, Pedro Castillo, patiently awaits the proclamation by the electoral commission, after right-wing destabilization attempts to prevent the rural teacher from taking office have failed.
At the same time, the lawyers and spokespersons of the defeated candidate Keiko Fujimori persisted in questioning the legality of the National Jury of Elections (JNE) and a new pronouncement by former chiefs of the Armed Forces encouraged the extreme right wing calls on the Internet for a military coup to close the way for Pedro Castillo.
In this context, the imperturbable rural teacher expressed that he is calmly awaiting the decision of the JNE to proclaim him winner, after obtaining the first place in the official counting of the votes of the June 6th ballot.
Castillo attended yesterday as a guest at a meeting of governors from all over the country who, in spite of an isolated discrepancy, recognized him as the virtual president elect, in the southern Andean city of Cusco, where he received signs of popular support.
In the event, he behaved as a virtual ruler, outlining the decentralist policy he intends to develop and calling for national unity 'without winners or losers, leaving behind the contest at the polls.
The JNE recomposed itself by incorporating Víctor Rodríguez, replacement of Luis Arce Córdova, who deserted after systematically opposing the decision of the other judges to reject Fujimorista requests for nullity of the minutes, for being out of time or for lacking evidence of their alleged suspicions of fraud.
When he retired, despite being forbidden to resign in the middle of the electoral process, Arce launched accusations against the other three magistrates of the JNE and against the heads of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which he represented, and of the Judiciary.
In addition, he gave rise to a group of right-wing politicians allied to Fujimori to discredit the JNE and ask President Francisco Sagasti to ask the Organization of American States (OAS) to audit the ballot 'as it did in 2019 in Bolivia,' where it gave rise to a coup d'état.
The idea collided with the silence of the president and communiqués from the OAS mission overseeing the process and other international instances that attested to the correctness of the ballot and the decisions of the JNE in the face of the pro-Fujimori claims and called for the culmination of the process and the proclamation of the new ruler.
The pro-Fujimori cause suffered another setback when the Judicial Power rejected the request of former right-wing judge Javier Villa to annul the ballot and hold a new election, for which he invoked the pro-Fujimori arguments against the JNE's rejection of his claims.
In spite of this, Fujimori's lawyer, Lourdes Flores, a veteran right-wing politician, denied the legality of the JNE's reconstitution, because Arce's resignation does not legally proceed and therefore he cannot be replaced.
However, the head of the court, Jorge Salas, suspended Arce and asked the Public Prosecutor's Office to send his replacement, which the Public Prosecutor's Office did.
Salas warned today that 'the electoral justice cannot continue paralyzed' and that 'the interruptive arts will not prosper,' while critics of Arce -- under investigation by the Public Prosecutor's Office for abandoning the JNE -- point out that his resignation was coordinated with the fujimorismo and was a maneuver at their service.
On the other hand, last night a new pronouncement of former chiefs of the Armed Forces was released, which, in general terms, reproduce the right-wing questioning of the JNE and the claims of the pro-Fujimori supporters that this court should investigate their allegations that they could not prove.
The influential journalist Nicolás Lúcar warned that if there is a coup d'état, it will be resisted by millions of Peruvians and will cost a lot of blood and it is unacceptable to put the country on the brink of a civil war just because of Keiko Fujimori's determination to be president and not be sentenced to prison for money laundering and other charges.