LIMA, Peru (Reuters):
LEFT-LEANING FORMER President Alan Garcia held his narrow lead over a pro-business rival yesterday for a runoff spot in Peru's election, in which he would face former army commander Ollanta Humala.
Aides to third-placed Lourdes Flores, who is trailing Garcia by some 100,000 votes, expressed confidence she would advance to the second round and called on election authorities to include around 1.5 million marred ballots in the count.
Election authorities told Reuters it would take around 10 days to review and count the marred ballots and a final result would probably not be announced until the end of the month.
Election officials and representatives from Peru's political parties who worked as observers during the vote said the ballots were either illegible or not filled in correctly.
"We're not asking for a recount, we want these ballots included because we believe they will favour us," said Flores' legal representative Xavier Barron. "We plan to be in the second round," he added.
With almost 88 per cent of the votes counted, Humala was running first with 30.97 per cent and assured of a place in a June runoff, as no candidate won a majority.
Garcia, whose 1985-1990 rule ended in hyper-inflation and surging violence by Shining Path rebels, was second with 24.44 percent. Flores, a lawyer and former congresswoman favoured by international investors, had 23.37 percent.
Election officials continued to tally votes for a fourth day, collecting ballots from remote Andean and jungle areas and Peruvians living abroad.
Only around five per cent of expatriate votes, which are likely to favour Flores, had come in, officials said.
Flores says she is particularly determined to beat Garcia to the second round because she narrowly lost to the former leader in the race for a runoff in Peru's 2001 election.
GARCIA A CHANGED MAN
Then, Garcia, 56, who heads the disciplined and long-established American Popular Revolutionary Alliance party, or APRA, lost to outgoing President Alejandro Toledo.
But a string of corruption scandals during Toledo's government and the president's failure to keep his promises on job creation, better schools and prosperity for the half of Peruvians who are poor have revived Garcia's political career.
Garcia has recast himself as a moderate who knows how to manage the country's fast-growing $75 billion economy, using his charisma to deliver a message he is has changed from the days when he refused to pay Peru's foreign debt.
International investors are beginning to believe him and see Garcia as a far better option than Humala, who has vowed to put Peru's economy in state hands for the benefit of the poor.
Still 40 percent of Peruvians say they would never vote for Garcia.
Lima's stock market jumped 3 percent on Wednesday on investor optimism that Garcia would beat Humala in a runoff. U.S. investment banks JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch said they bought Peruvian bonds and increased the weightings of Peru in their model portfolios.
Pre-election polls showed Humala would face a tight runoff against Garcia. If Humala were to face Flores, the polls suggested she would win.
