International
Fujimori edges ahead of Castillo in tight Peru presidential vote

AFP/Editor
Right-wing populist Keiko Fujimori held a narrow lead over radical leftist Pedro Castillo following a partial vote count in Peru’s presidential election on Sunday.
With 52.9 percent of the vote counted after 42 percent of polling stations were tallied, Fujimori edged ahead in a seesaw battle for the presidency after Ipsos pollsters declared a “statistical draw” following an earlier exit poll and quick count.
Peru’s new leader will need to tackle a country in crisis, suffering from recession and with the worst coronavirus fatality rate in the world after recording over 184,000 deaths among its 33 million population.
Peruvians will also look to the winner to end years of political turbulence after four presidents in the last three years, and with seven of the last 10 of the country’s leaders either having been convicted of or investigated for corruption.
Piero Corvetto, head of Peru’s top electoral body (ONPE) warned that many polling stations from rural areas — Castillo’s stronghold — had yet to be tallied.
“They haven’t counted our votes yet,” Castillo told supporters in Tacabamba, in the northern Cajamarca region where he lives.
An exit poll by Ipsos after voting ended at 7:00 pm (0000 GMT) showed Fujimori just ahead with 50.3 percent, sparking protests from Castillo supporters outside the ONPE offices in the capital Lima.
But three hours later the pollsters released a quick count that showed Castillo in front with 50.2 percent, bringing scenes of joy and celebrations to the northern Cajamarca region.
Castillo, 51, had earlier urged his supporters to “stay calm.”
“Seeing how small the gap is, it is essential to maintain prudence and I say that for all Peruvians,” added Fujimori, who had earlier been seen hugging family and campaign staff following the exit poll.
Both candidates promised to respect the results when voting earlier in the day.
– ‘Too tight’ –
“We’re not going to know (the winner) until the last vote” is counted, political scientist Jessica Smith told AFP.
“It’s still very unsure, the difference is too tight and we have to wait for the official result.”
Castillo, 51, had topped the first round of voting in April, when the pair both caused a surprise by reaching the second round, and he was also narrowly ahead in the latest opinion polls before Sunday’s vote.
At the height of the political storm in November last year, Peru had three different presidents in just five days.
Two million Peruvians have lost their jobs during the pandemic and nearly a third of the country now live in poverty, according to official figures.
For voters, this was a choice between polar opposites.
Fujimori, 46, represents the neoliberal economic model of tax cuts and boosting private activity to generate jobs.
Fujimori’s bastion is the capital Lima, while Castillo’s bulwark is the rural deep interior.
Trade unionist schoolteacher Castillo has pledged to nationalize vital industries, raise taxes, eliminate tax exemptions and increase state regulation.
He voted in Tacabamba following a breakfast with his family.
Favored by the business sector and middle classes, Fujimori tried to portray Castillo as a communist threat, warning that Peru would become a new Venezuela or North Korea should he win.
Castillo pointed to the Fujimori family’s history of corruption scandals. Keiko Fujimori is under investigation over campaign funding in her 2011 and 2016 presidential bids and has already spent 16 months in pre-trial detention.
Her father is serving a 25-year sentence for crimes against humanity and corruption.
– ‘It won’t be easy’ –
“If Keiko is eventually elected, you can’t forget that this 50 percent is not her real support but rather a reaction from an electorate that is afraid of what her opponent represents,” Smith told AFP.
Whoever wins will have a hard time governing as Congress is fragmented. Castillo’s Free Peru is the largest single party, just ahead of Fujimori’s Popular Force, but without a majority.
“It won’t be easy (for Fujimori) given the mistrust her name and that of her family generates in many sectors. She’ll have to quickly calm the markets and generate ways to reactivate them,” added Smith.
If Castillo triumphs, he’ll have to “consolidate a parliamentary majority that will allow him to deliver his ambitious program.”
But in either case “it will take time to calm the waters because there’s fierce polarization and an atmosphere of social conflict,” analyst Luis Pasaraindico told AFP.
Some 160,000 police and soldiers were deployed to guarantee peace on election day as 25 million people were due to vote, plus another one million from the Peruvian diaspora living in 75 countries around the world.
The new president will take office on July 28, replacing centrist interim leader Francisco Sagasti.
International
Venezuela Refuses to Repatriate Citizens Amid Tensions Over Chevron’s Departure

The government of Venezuela privately warned the government of Donald Trump that it will not accept its own citizens being deported, following the United States’ decision to end Chevron’s license to operate in the Caribbean country, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
The newspaper, citing sources familiar with the matter, notes that the Venezuelan repatriation agreement is becoming strained after a January meeting between Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell and the Chavista leader Nicolás Maduro, who is not recognized as president by the U.S. The Chevron issue has exacerbated tensions.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration ended Chevron’s license in Venezuela and gave the company a month, until April 3, to leave the country after President Trump criticized Maduro for not accelerating the deportation of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as quickly as expected.
The WSJ indicates that Venezuela’s private warning could further hinder Trump’s promised mass deportation campaignof undocumented immigrants, which his administration has already had to pause due to the high costs of using military planes for repatriation flights.
International
Hearing suspended in Guatemala on revocation of José Rubén Zamora’s house arrest

Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín will know until next week if he should return to preventive detention, after this Friday the hearing was suspended for a possible revocation of his house arrest.
The resumption of the hearing was rescheduled for next Monday, at 10:00 local time (16:00 GMT), by order of criminal judge Erick García, since, as he indicated, he lacks the case file for the moment.
The possible return of Zamora Marroquín to prison is due to a case of alleged money laundering in 2022, the year in which the Public Ministry (Prosecution), whose leadership is sanctioned internationally under allegations of corruption, began a judicial prosecution against him.
The journalist’s potential return to prison takes place after this week an Appeals Chamber revoked the house arrest measures that had been granted since October 2024 to the former owner and founder of the media El Periódico, a morning in which he uncovered more than a thousand cases of state corruption.
According to the opinion of the magistrates of the Third Appeals Chamber, there was “an error” in the resolution of the judge who decided to release the journalist last year. The review of the measures was requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Zamora Marroquín was detained for the case for more than 800 days, between July 29, 2022 and October 2024, without his guilt being proven to date.
Before this Friday’s hearing, the journalist recalled in statements to the media that he has complied with all the court orders regarding his house arrest, and reiterated that he has not seen his family for more than two years, since they are abroad in the face of the risks they could encounter in the Central American country.
Likewise, he added that the persecution against him has been “physical and psychological but I am not going to give up” and described the Third Appeals Chamber as a court linked to the “corrupt” and Deputy Felipe Alejos, sanctioned by the United States for corruption.
Zamora Marroquín, with 30 years of journalistic career, was arrested on July 29, 2022, just five days after issuing strong criticism for corruption against then-President Alejandro Giammattei, between 2020 and 2024, and his close circle.
The journalist remained in prison for a judicial process for alleged money laundering, which according to international organizations such as the Inter-American Press Society (IAPA) has been plagued with irregularities.
International
Trump withdraws 400 million federal funds from Columbia University for anti-Semitism

Donald Trump’s government canceled this Friday subsidies and contracts with Columbia University in New York worth 400 million dollars “due to its passivity in the face of the persistent harassment of Jewish students,” after receiving on Monday a report commissioned by the administration on anti-Semitism on the campuses of several universities in the country.
This cancellation “is the first set of actions, and new cancellations are expected,” warns a statement signed by the general administrative services, which specify that Columbia currently has 5 billion federally committed.
The decision to cut subsidies and contracts has been made together with the federal departments of Justice, Health, Education and Administrative Services, after the operational group commissioned by the government with the specific task of detecting and denouncing anti-Semitic behavior has not received a satisfactory response from Columbia, according to the statement.
Complaints of anti-Semitism began to appear in Columbia and other campuses shortly after October 7, 2023, the date on which Hamas launched a terrorist attack against Israel, which was then followed by a war declared by Israel against Gaza that has been one of the deadliest in several decades.
That war gave rise to demonstrations against Israel as they had not been seen on university campuses for fifty years, with Columbia at the spearhead, with some anti-Jewish incidents that made the Joe Biden Government intervene and summon the rectors of several universities to Congress, several of which (including Columbia’s) had to resign.
Despite the fact that the protests have dropped a lot in terms of intensity, Trump went further than Joe Biden: first, he named that operative group on anti-Semitism on campuses, and second, he threatened to withdraw visas or residence permits from students accused of supporting “terrorist organizations like Hamas.”
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon says that Columbia “for too long has left its homework with Jewish students on its campus, but today we show Columbia and the other universities that we will no longer tolerate that terrible passivity.”
And the director of the group that sent his report last Monday, Leo Torrell, abounded in the threats: “Freezing funds is one of the tools at our disposal to respond to this upsurge in anti-Semitism. This is just the beginning,” he said.
Curiously, in the protests against Israel, one of the most active groups has been the left-wing Jews, who have denounced that under the premise of anti-Semitism, legitimate political criticisms against the State of Israel are being included.
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