Center-right economist narrowly ahead in Peru election

On the other hand, Kuczynski still has a US passport, was a member of the World Bank, and has close ties to Wall Street.

His technocrat’s career was cut short in 1968, when he lost his job during a military coup.

Peruvian debt inched tighter on Monday in a somewhat muted response to market-favorite Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s surprise lead in the country’s presidential election.

He served as Minister of Energy and Mines in the early 1980s under President Fernando Belaúnde Terry, and as Minister of Economy and Finance and Prime Minister under President Alejandro Toledo in the 2000s. The margin of error in both counts was 1 percentage point.

Another printout detailed the cost of the Fujimori children’s education in United States colleges and universities, including travel and housing costs, all allegedly paid for with money meant for government work.

The late anti-Fujimori surge was a repeat of the one that helped defeat her in 2011 when the beneficiary was outgoing president Ollanta Humala, a nationalist former military officer.

The back story of Peru’s runoff presidential election this Sunday involves mass sterilization, a jailed ex-president, ethnic diversity and guinea pigs.

Speaking from a balcony at his campaign headquarters in Lima, Mr. Kuczynski told his supporters to be patient – but also to be on the lookout for fraud.

“If Fujimori wins the big question is whether she’ll be able to control her party”, said Eduardo Dargent, a political scientist at Lima’s Catholic University.

A potential swing vote in a close race could be the 885,000 Peruvians eligible to vote overseas – about 3.8% of the electorate. Although accusations against Mr Ramírez, who denies all wrongdoing, are nothing new-Peruvian prosecutors have been investigating him for two years-the memory of corruption during Alberto Fujimori’s government made the claims particularly damaging to his daughter.

The reference wasn’t just to Alberto Fujimori’s well-known ties to corruption, organized crime and death squads, for which he’s serving a 25-year jail sentence, but an attempt to draw attention to a string of scandals that have hobbled Fujimori in the final stretch.

Her running mate, Jose Chlimper, a Cabinet member at the end of Alberto Fujimori’s government, also found himself in hot water for orchestrating the broadcast of a doctored audio tape in an attempt to clear the name of the party boss.

PPK, as Kuczynski is nearly universally known in Peru, is also benefiting from a last-minute endorsement by the third-place finisher in the first round of voting, leftist congresswoman Veronika Mendoza, the protagonist of a massive anti-Fujimori demonstration this week the likes of which Peru hasn’t seen since the turbulent end of Fujimori’s rule 16 years ago.

In addition, many Peruvians have vowed to never vote for anyone associated with her father.

Fujimori has promised to take an iron-fist approach to crime, the top voter concern, while ramping up spending on scores of infrastructure projects from reservoirs to roads.

The candidates in Peru’s presidential run-off election are locked in a tight race with exit polls providing conflicting results shortly after voting ended on Sunday.

Kuczynski’s Jewish roots have not been an issue during the election campaign, though Fujimori has tried to depict him as part of the white elite establishment that has traditionally overlooked the needs of the poor.

Now, Keiko Fujimori could be on the verge of following in his footsteps.