Police raid Peru’s election authorities after outcry over slow vote count

Police in the Peruvian capital of Lima have raided a home belonging to the former head of its national election agency, amid growing frustration in the aftermath of the country’s presidential election.

As of Friday, results still had not been finalised for the presidential race, which took place on April 12.

Delays in ballot deliveries forced the voting in some areas to be extended by an extra day, and the slow vote count has led to accusations of wrongdoing. But the European Union’s election mission to Peru found no indication of fraud.

Law enforcement was seen entering the home of Piero Corvetto, the former head of Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), on Friday as part of a judicial warrant.

The officers with the local anticorruption police unit were tasked with removing mobile phones, laptops and documents, according to local broadcaster RPP.

The homes of five other officials were also targeted by police raids, as were offices belonging to Galaga, a private company that transports election ballots.

Corvetto resigned on Tuesday, though he denied any wrongdoing or irregularities in the election process. In a statement, he said he hoped his departure would boost public confidence.

On Friday, his lawyer, Ricardo Sanchez Carranza, told the news agency Reuters that a judge authorised the raid but denied prosecutors’ request to put Corvetto in preliminary detention.

But one of the leading presidential candidates, Lima’s former far-right mayor, Rafael Lopez Aliaga, has accused Corvetto of being a “criminal” and pledging to pursue him “until he dies”.

Lopez Aliaga is currently in a narrow race for second place in the presidential election.

With 95 percent of the ballots tallied, right-wing candidate and former First Lady Keiko Fujimori is in first place with 17 percent of the vote. She is all but assured of proceeding to the run-off on June 7.

Lopez Aliaga, meanwhile, is in third place with 11.9 percent, behind left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez at 12.03 percent.

Roughly 20,000 votes separate Sanchez from Lopez Aliaga, who has increasingly denounced the election as illegitimate, though he has yet to provide evidence to support that claim. Still, he has called the vote tally an “electoral fraud unique in the world”.

The final results are expected on May 15.