Lima – Peruvian electoral officials confirmed Monday that former President Alan Garcia was elected again to his nation’s highest office 21 years after the beginning of his first term.
The Social Democrat took 55.4 percent of the vote in Sunday’s runoff, handily defeating nationalist candidate and former army colonel Ollanta Humala, the National Elections Office said after counting more than three-quarters of the ballots.
Garcia, whose first term ended with the nation sunk in economic crisis and raging civil strife, promised to govern this time around “with maturity and responsibility.”
Humala, who got 44.5 percent of the vote, conceded defeat, congratulating Garcia but also his own backers, who in first-round balloting had given his left-leaning Union for Peru a plurality in Congress.
“Today the great transformation begins,” he said in his concession address. “It is a reality that the political map of Peru has changed.”
Humala, who enjoyed the overt support of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to whom he has been likened by both detractors and supporters, had garnered the most votes among three main candidates in the April 9 first round.
But conservatives whose candidate, Lourdes Flores, was narrowly edged out by Garcia for the second runoff berth overwhelmingly voted for the Social Democrat on Sunday, worried that an “anti-imperialist” and populist former military man in the mold of Chavez might gain power here.
“I congratulate Mr. Alan Garcia for his victory. But it is in part a mirage … Part of the vote he received does not pertain to him, being rather the ‘fear vote,'” said Flores after the results were in.
Garcia took Lima, by far the nation’s biggest electoral district, but Humala prevailed in the countryside, underscoring the Andean nation’s marked social and political divides.
Garcia asked his compatriots to forgive him for the poor job he did in his first five-year term, saying his failures then were due to “unruly appetites and a vocation for power.”
He thanked them for “this second chance.”
