A Delay in Vote Count Raises Tensions in Peru

LIMA, Peru —  A delayed vote count in Peru’s presidential election worsened the country’s political crisis Monday, with President Alberto Fujimori apparently close to an outright victory that would allow him to avoid a runoff against challenger Alejandro Toledo.

International concern about allegations of foul play, however, prompted the U.S. ambassador to declare support for Peruvian election monitors who say that a first-round victory by Fujimori would be the result of fraud. Toledo, a former World Bank economist, declared that he would not recognize the government’s election results.

U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton issued a veiled warning to Fujimori at an afternoon meeting of Transparencia, the main Peruvian election watchdog. Hamilton expressed confidence in Transparencia’s statistical projection, based on a “quick count” of a nationwide sample of ballots, that showed Fujimori falling short of the 50%-plus-one needed for a first-round victory.

“It is our expectation, based on our high level of confidence in Transparencia and the scientific method of the quick count, that there will be a second-round election,” Hamilton told reporters.

The ambassador made his unusually pointed comments when the vote count was less than halfway complete, reflecting Washington’s increasing concerns about democracy here. Nonetheless, Hamilton and U.S. officials in Washington described Sunday’s vote as basically peaceful and orderly.

Fujimori responded Monday night with a vigorous defense of the election. He said the problems were minor and that Peruvians and the international community would simply have to await the final results. He dismissed the pressure from U.S., European and Latin American diplomats to accept the inevitability of a runoff election, saying it was wrong to rely on projections based on a representative sample of ballots.

“We cannot say whether the election will be defined in a first round or a second round,” Fujimori said. “We cannot base the result on a survey by an institution, as prestigious as it may be . . . of only 700 polling places that makes a projection for 90,000 polling places. This does not happen anywhere in the world.”

Meanwhile, the angry statements by candidate Toledo raised the stakes of the most critical election in recent Peruvian history.

“Whatever the results are, we will not recognize them,” Toledo said Monday afternoon. He cited what he called the “quantity and the seriousness of the irregularities in the voting process.”

Toledo’s decision suggested that he believed the government would declare Fujimori the victor. With 55.9% of the vote counted, Fujimori had 49.63%, just a fraction short of outright victory. Toledo had 40.62%, according to election officials. Seven other candidates split the remaining votes.

Exit polls Sunday afternoon showed Toledo with as much as 48% and leading by as much as 5 percentage points. Later, pollsters’ projections based on actual vote samples reversed the candidates’ positions, giving Fujimori the lead.

Toledo reacted to the decline in his fortunes by leading thousands of supporters in a march Monday, just after midnight, on the presidential palace. Clad in a red headband and hoarse from giving fiery speeches, he rode the shoulders of partisans up to the iron gates of the colonial-style palace. Riot police firing tear gas broke up the crowd.

The president condemned Toledo’s leadership of the street protest as reckless, recalling the years of political violence suffered by Peruvians. He also brushed off Toledo’s intention of rejecting the results of the election.

“This goes precisely against the will of the people,” the president said. He added: “I think that the will of the people must be respected.”

The suspense and suspicion worsened Monday because of a mysterious delay in the vote count. The federal election agency earlier had told observers from the Organization of American States that about 90% of the vote would be counted by noon Monday.

The chief of the OAS election monitoring mission, former Guatemalan Foreign Minister Eduardo Stein, said there had been a mysterious delay in the transport of ballot boxes to computerized regional vote count centers. That delay affected Lima, the capital, as well as remote rural areas with transportation problems, Stein said. The president has strong support in isolated mountain and jungle areas.

Stein said the delay in the tally might have resulted from poor planning but inevitably raised fears of skulduggery.

“The whole atmosphere is so tense and so loaded with suspicions from all sides,” Stein said in an interview. “There has not been a convincing explanation of why the delay has happened.”

The OAS had conducted its own “quick count” of a vote sample, and the projection indicated that a runoff election would be necessary, Stein said. But he downplayed the discrepancies between exit polls and vote projections, saying that exit polls based on interviews of voters are “grossly inexact.”

In a show of solidarity with Peruvian watchdog groups, Stein joined the U.S. ambassador and diplomats from Britain, Canada and other nations at the meeting of Transparencia. Leaders of Transparencia told reporters that the federal election agency “lacked credibility,” and warned in a statement: “If the second-round election is eliminated, we will have every right to believe that this is the culmination of a fraud prepared well in advance.”

Fujimori, Toledo and the rest of Peru now face an uncertain panorama. Proof of widespread election-day fraud has yet to emerge, according to the OAS observers and U.S. officials. And Transparencia’s own projections give Fujimori 48.7% of the vote.

Transparencia, which has been recognized by Fujimori’s government as a credible monitor, insists that the margin of error of its vote analysis ruled out a first-round victory. Moreover, Monday’s delay in the vote count and ongoing problems and secrecy affecting the computerized counting system raised the specter of sophisticated fraud.

The context of the election made matters worse. During the campaign, international and Peruvian watchdogs documented heavy-handed misconduct by Fujimori forces, including manipulation of the media and massive forgery of voter registration signatures. There were allegations Sunday that Fujimori operatives were caught with pre-marked ballots, that soldiers and police coerced and intimidated voters, and that Transparencia’s phone lines and computers were targeted by saboteurs.

Ten years of secretive, sometimes sinister tactics by the government, especially the national intelligence service, have created a culture of paranoia, Peruvians say.

Government officials were not the only ones under fire in the postelection turmoil.

Toledo, a Stanford-educated 54-year-old, seemed to jump the gun Sunday after seeing the exit polls indicating a runoff election was likely. He all but declared victory and waxed eloquent about his plans for Peru, then reacted with disbelief when the numbers changed.

Toledo also might have showed poor judgment with his harangue to the thousands gathered outside his hotel and his sudden decision to lead the rowdy protest on the presidential palace.

Pro-government publications wasted no time branding Toledo a rabble-rouser. The Expreso newspaper showed photos of Toledo in the crowd facing off with police in Lima’s colonial central plaza, his face distorted and shirt drenched with sweat, and accused him of “inciting violence.”

Even Toledo partisans said he might have given ammunition to his rivals. Whatever they might think of Fujimori, many Peruvians admire the president for having imposed order in a nation once racked by terrorism.

Despite Toledo’s decision to reject the final results, the U.S. State Department appeared to take a second round for granted. In Washington, the Clinton administration warned Fujimori’s government that the legitimacy of the entire election depends on the next round of voting being democratic, open and fair, conditions it said were not always in evidence in Sunday’s first round.

“We urge the government of Peru and Peru’s elected authorities to take every possible measure to ensure that the next round of voting fully meets democratic standards of openness, transparency and fairness,” said State Department spokesman James P. Rubin. “The legitimacy of the next president is at stake.”

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Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.