Alan Garcia, the former Peruvian president seeking the
presidency with the Peru Aprist Party, is leading the country's
exit polls on Sunday, with 55 percent and 52.8 percent of the vote,
compared with 47.2 percent and 45 percent for his rival Ollanta
Humala.
Humala leads the Nationalist Peru Union.
The results, which are indicative polls, carried out by
unofficial researchers, will be confirmed or denied by the official
National Electoral Process Office in a few hours.
Sunday's vote is a run-off between two left-wingers, who won the
most votes from a 20-strong field of first round candidates.
The exit polls are in line with voting intentions published on
May 26, with one major difference: last month, 23 percent of those
polled said they had not decided which way to vote.
Garcia, 57, won just over 24 percent in the April 9 first round
vote while Humala, 43, won just short of 31 percent.
Polls closed at 4.00 PM local time (21:00 GMT) on Sunday without
major incident. Reports from the Organization of American States,
said that the elections were carried out normally, with only minor
incidents, such as late opening at some polling stations.
Some 16.5 million Peruvians are eligible to vote in these
elections.
Garcia was educated in the Law Department of Catholic University
in Lima and the National University of San Marcos. He became a
lawyer in 1972 and then continued to study in Spain, France,
Britain and the Netherlands. He gained a doctor's degree in law and
sociology.
He has pledged to scrap any free-trade deal with the United
States and raise taxes on the mining industry, the main engine of
Peru's economy.
(Xinhua News Agency June 5, 2006)
