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15 Million Peruvian Voters to Elect President on Sunday
About 15 million Peruvian voters are reportedly to take part in Sunday's presidential runoff between economist Alejandro Toledo and ex-president Alan Garcia.
Toledo, the 55-year-old leader of the "Possible Peru" party, yearns to become the first Peruvian president of indigenous provenance. Toledo led with 36 percent of the vote in the first round, compared with 25 percent for Garcia. A 50 percent is necessary for an outright victory.
Garcia, 52, candidate of the Aprista Party, depicts himself as an experienced statesman and wants an opportunity to earn a place in history as a good president.
At the age of 36, Garcia became one of Latin America's youngest presidents ever. But during his 1985-1990 administration, he made disastrous errors because of the Aprista party's leftist ideas and inexperience.
The two frontrunners have carried out an intense and polemical presidential campaign, in which they both confronted all kinds of accusations.
According to the latest polls, Toledo was very likely to win as he was still leading Garcia in polls. However, a Garcia victory cannot be ruled out as a great number of people were undecided. Another uncertainty is the proportion of invalid or blank votes, as the majority of pollsters have predicted that it would reach a historic record of 22 percent mark, or even as high as 30 percent.
Advocates of invalid and blank votes believe both Garcia and Toledo lack "ethical quality" to be president, because the former faces corruption charges, and the latter was hit by a sex and drugs scandal.
Meanwhile, various media organizations warned that a narrow victory in Sunday's runoff could become a powder keg leading the country into a chaotic political situation and the loser could possibly allege that there had been irregularities in the balloting.
To avoid this risk, heads of the Election Observation Mission of the Organization of American States met on Friday with both Garcia and Toledo separately, asking them to accept the results peacefully. The two candidates have reportedly promised to accept the results "whatever they may be."
The presidential runoff election will be supervised by some observers of the Peruvian private organization Transparencia, a European Parliamentary mission and a U.S Democratic Party delegation headed by former State Secretary Madeleine Albright.
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