Centre-right candidate Keiko Fujimori has won the first round of Peru’s presidential election, early results say.
With two-fifths of ballots counted, Fujimori had 39 per cent and appeared likely to face Pedro Kuczynski, a former World Bank economist, in a June run-off vote.
Kuczynski had 24 per cent while leftist Congresswoman Veronika Mendoza, who had made a late surge in pre-election polls, was in third at 17 per cent.
Final results were not expected until sometime on Monday, but Kuczynski’s supporters celebrated in the streets outside his campaign headquarters in Lima after two unofficial quick counts indicated he would edge out Mendoza for the right to face Fujimori on June 5.
Such counts have been reliable predictors of results in previous Peruvian elections.
The centre-right Fujimori was the runaway front-runner for months and looked poised to outdo even the most-optimistic first round scenarios in polls published on the eve of voting.
Fujimori, the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, says tackling crime is her priority.
She is also supported by some Peruvians who credit her father with defeating the country’s Maoist Shining Path rebel group.
However, other Peruvians have said they would never support anyone associated with her father, who is currently serving 25 years in prison for ordering death squads to massacre civilians during his attempts to end the insurgency.
The Shining Path rebel group was largely dismantled in the 1990s after a decade-long conflict that killed about 69,000 people.
However, rebels estimated to number in the hundreds still control areas of jungle in a coca-growing region of the country and the Peruvian authorities say they have joined forces with drug gangs.
Remnants of the group are thought to have been behind a deadly attack on a vehicle carrying election materials in a remote coca-growing region ahead of the election.
While her father is remembered fondly by many, especially in the long-overlooked countryside, for defeating Maoist- inspired Shining Path rebels and taming hyperinflation, he is detested by large segments of the urban middle class for human rights abuses and his order for the military to shut down Congress.
Almost half of Peruvians surveyed said they would never vote for anyone associated with the former leader and thousands took to the streets a week ago to warn that Keiko Fujimori’s election could bring back authoritarian rule.
In a bid to project a more moderate image, Fujimori promised during her campaign not to pardon her father, who is serving out a 25-year sentence for authorising death squads during his decade-long rule starting in 1990.
On Sunday night, she told supporters it was time to bury the past.
“Peruvians want reconciliation and don’t want to fight anymore,” she told supporters while standing on a truck parked outside a luxury Lima hotel.
Peru is one of the biggest coca leaf and cocaine producers in the world, according to the US authorities.