Peru’s Fujimori clings to fraud claim as Castillo nears win | Al Jazeera

A Peruvian presidential candidate who is likely to lose a runoff election against her socialist rival has led a protest in the capital, Lima, calling again for the annulment of votes that do not favour her.
“If the (electoral) jury analyses this, the election will be flipped, dear friends,” Keiko Fujimori told thousands of her supporters, many waving Peru’s red-and-white flag, on Saturday. “I’m the sort of person who never gives up.”

Frontrunner Pedro Castillo, a member of the left-wing Free Peru party, is close to being named the Andean country’s next president, despite Fujimori’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud, as the count from the second round of voting earlier this month nears an end.

Castillo, an elementary school teacher who was raised in an impoverished village, was leading the count by 50,000 votes on Saturday evening, with only about 16,000 votes remaining to be counted.

But Fujimori, who risks imminent trial on corruption charges if she loses the election, has increasingly doubled down on allegations of fraud this week. The right-wing candidate says supporters of Castillo stole votes in rural areas where she got no votes and is seeking the annulment of 200,000 already-counted ballots...