Presidential election begins in Peru

Peruvians began voting to choose their new president on Sunday, with the main competition among 20 candidates being between former president Alan Garcia, a social democrat from the Peru Aprist Party, and Ollanta Humala, who leads the Peru Nationalist Union Party (PNUPP).

The latest polls on May 26 showed Garcia with 54 percent and Humala with46 percent.

Some 23 percent of the people surveyed said they either had not decided, or found neither candidate appealing. Analysts said those people might swing the final outcome of the race.

Out of the 99.98 percent of the votes counted for the first round of the election on April 9, Humala, 43, got 30.62 percent, while the 57-year-old Garcia, who was in power from 1985 to 1990, had 24.32 percent.

Source: Xinhua