Victory in sight for Peru’s Castillo as prosecutor seeks custody for rival

Peruvian socialist Pedro Castillo is maintaining a slim lead over rival Keiko Fujimori with 99.998 percent of the votes counted and as electoral authorities met to scrutinise contested votes. Castillo, an elementary school teacher and political novice who won widespread grassroots backing for pledges to rewrite the constitution of the world’s No 2 copper producer and redistribute wealth, had 50.2 percent of the vote, maintaining a 0.4 percentage point lead over right-wing Keiko Fujimori, or 71,441 votes. Some 300,000 contested votes are being scrutinised by an electoral jury, a process that will take several days to complete and could delay the announcement of who will be the next president to take over from interim leader Francisco Sagasti at the end of July. However analysts said any outstanding votes were now unlikely to tip the balance. “Pedro Castillo is all but certain to be the next president,” said Eileen Gavin, principal analyst of Global Markets and the Americas for United Kingdom-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.