Peru: President Francisco Sagasti voted and asked to respect the will of the people

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Francisco Sagasti, president of Peru, voted this Sunday in the second round of elections and asked to respect the will of the people in elections that are expected to be very tight and whose results could take more than a day.

What is most important is to respect the will of the people, said the interim president after voting. Sagasti maintained his neutrality and gave no clues about the direction of his vote, disputed by the right-wing Keiko Fujimori and the left-wing Pedro Castillo.

The electoral bodies, the JNE (National Elections Jury), the ONPE (National Office of Electoral Processes) are autonomous. What the Executive does is support them and respect their autonomy, "he said outside the La Molina Agrarian University.

He said, the president also expressed his wish that more people attend than in the general elections in April. The most important thing is that all citizens go to vote. It is a right but also civic responsibility, a duty. I hope that the absenteeism is lower than in the first round.

On Friday, Sagasti issued a televised message with a call to the public to "as soon as the election day ends, let us remain calm and wait for the official results to be delivered by the electoral authorities," in view of the climate of tension and polarization.

The words of the president, who took office in November and will deliver it in July, are addressed to the Peruvian electorate after the end of the political campaign and when the two presidential candidates maintain a virtual technical tie, according to the latest national polls published on last Sunday.

The more than 11,400 polling stations opened their doors at 7 (local time, 12 GMT), as ordered by the national electoral office, to receive for 12 hours three more than usual the votes of 25 million citizens, but at first hours there was little influx of voters in Lima.

Both candidates spent the last hours with their family, after closing their campaigns on Thursday in Lima at rallies with hundreds of followers crowded together, while the pandemic did not give truce to Peru, which this week had the highest death rate in the world from Covid-19, after adjusting the figures. The country accumulates almost two million infections and more than 180,000 deaths.