A 77-year-old former American citizen appears to have bested the daughter of a disgraced Peruvian president in a photo-finish race to become the next president of Peru.
Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has won a bare majority of votes — 50.12% — over Keiko Fujimori, Peru’s national election office announced on its official Twitter page Thursday evening.
Kuczynski cannot be named president-elect until the electoral college makes the vote official, the election office said.
“Thank you Peru, it is time to work together for the future of our new country,” Kuczynski announced on Twitter, although Fujimori has yet to concede.
Kuczynski, a former World Bank executive and ex-prime minister of Peru who has also served as finance and energy ministers, ran for president the first time in 2011. He came in third in that race, behind Fujimori and current President Ollanta Humala. He had refused to renounce his American nationality, which had become a campaign issue.
Known as PPK, he has since renounced his American citizenship, although he is married to an American woman and his children live in the United States.
Fujimori is the 41-year-old daughter of controversial former President Alberto Fujimori who is imprisoned for corruption and human-rights violations.
Her father, who was president from 1990 to 2000, is credited with restoring economic stability and with defeating the Maoist Shining Path guerrillas, who carried out terrorist attacks. But his authoritarian style led to accusations of human rights abuses and corruption.
In separate trials, Alberto Fujimori, the son of Japanese immigrants, was found guilty of authorizing illegal wiretaps and bribing lawmakers and journalists. He was also convicted of using public money to pay the country’s spy chief and with burglarizing the spy’s chief’s house to steal incriminating videos.
In 2009, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted of authorizing the operation of a death squad responsible for killing civilians.
Kuczynski is the son of a French teacher and a German Jewish doctor who fled the Nazis.
The winner will take over Peru’s government on July 28 from Humala. Peru’s constitution barred him from seeking a second term.
