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Peru's
presidential election heads to
runoff
Two leading candidates for
presidency will compete in a
runoff in May as none of them
garnered more than 50 percent of
the votes needed to win Peru's
presidential election on Sunday,
the preliminary results showed.
With 45.16 percent of the votes
counted, the Central Election
Commission said late Sunday
night that former army leader
Ollanta Humala got a slim lead
with 27.32 percent of the votes,
followed by conservative Lourdes
Flores with 26.45 percent and
social-democratic former
president Alan Garcia with 26.05
percent.
About 16.50 million voters cast
their ballot in 4,041 ballot
stations on Sunday all over the
country.
The commission also said that
the ballot results could change
because the current votes
counted were mostly from urban
areas. While Humala's bastions
are in the provinces, especially
in the rural areas, where he is
expected to come out on top to
enter the runoff.
Eighteen candidates competed in
the presidential election, of
whom two had withdrawn shortly
before the poll.
Under the Peruvian constitution,
if no candidate gets 50 percent
of the votes, the top two
vote-winners stand for a runoff,
and the one with simple majority
wins the presidency.
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