Peruvian Candidate Quits Race, Alleging Fraud

Alejandro Toledo officially withdrew Monday from the presidential runoff scheduled for May 28, accusing incumbent President Alberto Fujimori of rigging votes.

Carlos Bringas of the National Election Board said the move gave Fujimori an automatic reelection victory. The full five-member board, however, did not announce its position.

Legal expert Francisco Chirinos Soto said the Fujimori-dominated board would be violating the constitution if it declared him president without a second round.

Toledo filed a formal letter of withdrawal with the board Monday, announcing that he would not participate unless the runoff was set for a later date. On Thursday, he announced that he was boycotting the runoff but did not officially withdraw until Monday.

The election board Thursday rejected Toledo’s demand to postpone the election until June 18 to allow time to clean up a vote-counting system that he said had been rigged to give Fujimori a third five-year term. The first round of voting took place April 9.

The runoff was already in doubt. Earlier Monday, international monitors said they found grave flaws in the vote-counting software and were suspending cooperation with Peruvian election officials.

The Organization of American States accused the officials of trying to use the observers to endorse the irregularities.

“They want to use our observation personnel to validate or endorse situations that . . . contradict what our own observers are reporting,” said Eduardo Stein, head of the OAS mission.

Peru’s official election organizers said computer software crucial to validating May 28’s presidential runoff had passed a trial run Sunday.