Peru holds tight presidential run-off vote

Peru’s presidential candidates Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Keiko Fujimori are tied ahead of Sunday’s election, according to last-minute opinion polls, BBC reports.

Kuczynski had 50.4 percent of valid votes in a mock voting exercise Ipsos conducted a day before the elections, compared to Fujimori’s 49.6 percent. The two are statistically tied as the poll had a 1.8 percentage point margin of error.

Centre-right candidate Ms Fujimori, 41, had led in the polls after winning the first round of voting in April.

But Mr Kuczynski, 77, an ex-Wall Street financier and World Bank executive, has since narrowed the gap.

Ms Fujimori is the daughter of ex-President Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for crimes against humanity.

She has said tackling crime is her priority and won support from some Peruvians who credit her father with defeating the country’s Maoist Shining Path rebel group.

Kuczynski is supported by the main opposition forces, including prominent figures such as left-wing former candidate Veronika Mendoza and the Nobel Prize winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

But he has faced scrutiny over his close relationship to the Peru’s business elite.

Some 23 million Peruvians are expected to vote on Sunday in the election to replace outgoing leftist President Ollanta Humala.