Leftist Humala narrowly wins Peru election (AP)

LIMA, Peru – A leftist former army officer with questioned human rights credentials narrowly won Peru's presidency in a bitterly fought runoff with the daughter of disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

Ollanta Humala, 48, won Sunday after softening his radical image and disavowing the affinity for Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez that fueled his defeat in a first run for the presidency five years earlier.

Not all were convinced by the makeover: Peru's stock market nose-dived Monday, falling 12 percent by midday.

Humala promises Peru's poor a greater share of the Andean nation's considerable mineral wealth and pledged in victory to honor the free market but put Peruvians first.

The former army lieutenant colonel won 51.5 percent of the vote against 48.5 percent for Keiko Fujimori, according to complete unofficial results compiled by the independent election watchdog Transparencia.

Official results, with about 90 percent of the vote counted, had Humala ahead with 51.3 percent but officials cautioned that rural districts where Humala fared better were slow in reporting.

Humala told supporters Sunday night he'd work to convert a decade-long economic boom that is the envy of Latin America into "the great motor of the social inclusion Peruvians desire." He says he'll do so by taxing windfall mining profits and exporting less natural gas so Peruvians get it cheaper.

But he has also said he won't expropriate land or nationalize industries. And he says he won't renegotiate Peru's free trade agreements or seek to rewrite the constitution, reversing himself on early campaign pledges. He says he wants to follow Brazil's market-friendly model for elevating the poor.

Rife with mudslinging and dirty tricks, the campaign was marred by doubts about both candidates' commitment to democracy.

Fujimori's father is serving a 25-year prison term for rights abuses and corruption, and many Peruvians considered her little more than his proxy. Humala has been accused of violent excesses as an army counterinsurgency unit commander in the 1990s and of encouraging a bloody uprising his brother staged in 2005 seeking to oust then-President Alejandro Toledo that cost four policemen their lives.

Keiko Fujimori, 36, did not immediately concede, instead appearing briefly before supporters Sunday night to ask them "responsibly and with prudence" await official results.

Humala narrowly lost the presidency to Alan Garcia in 2006. In that election he presented himself as a fan of Gen. Juan Velasco, the leftist dictator who expropriated land from the rich and nationalized a raft of industries during his 1968-75 rule.

This time, Humala tempered his rhetoric.

After initially vowing to renegotiate free trade agreements and rewrite the constitution "to create an economic regime with social justice as its goal" he reversed himself, pledging to instead follow Brazil's market-friendly model for elevating the poor.

Two weeks ago, he swore on the Bible to respect democracy and press freedom.

But Humala failed to win over the business elite and most of the news media, which campaigned openly against him. They fear he's a Velasco reincarnate.

As he rose in popularity, stockholders sold off shares in Lima's exchange.

Billions are at stake. Investors have pledged more than $40 billion over the next decade to develop gold, silver, copper and other mining operations in rich Andean lodes.

In a rousing victory speech Sunday to more than 10,000 supporters in central Lima, Humala said he would create jobs, build homes, and deliver running water and electricity to long-neglected backwaters.

"We've been waiting a long time for a government that really cares about the poor," he said, rather than catering to a Lima elite that sells transnationals the mineral riches that comprise more than 65 percent of Peru's export earnings.

"This has got to change, and it's for this change that I am here. That is why I got into politics," Humala said. "I'm only interested in achieving what I've offered the Peruvian people."

His base was the one in three Peruvians who are poor — in Peru's rural highlands its closer to two in three.

Jose Romero, a 58-year-old construction worker who said he was harassed for labor organizing during Alberto Fujimori's regime, was overjoyed by Humala's win and pledges to protect workers from exploitation that let employers hire people full time without paying benefits.

"We're getting everything back with him. Good jobs will come back. There won't be corruption. I believe in his word," said Romero, who is from Peru's poorest state, Huancavelica.

Both candidates promised a raft of giveaways for the poor, including free school meals and preschool care. Humala promised a government pension for all at age 65.

Exit polls gave Humala better than 70 percent of the vote in four poor highland states including Puno, where Aymara Indians who object to a planned Canadian-owned silver mine suspended a nearly monthlong highway blockade so people could vote. The protesters fear the mine will poison their water.

Fujimori did capture Lima, but by a modest margin.

Humala finished first in the election's April 10 first round, when three centrist candidates together split 45 percent of the vote. He got a big boost with the endorsement of Toledo, who finished fourth. Toledo had previously likened voting for Humala to "a jump into the abyss."

Had Toledo and the other two centrists united behind a single candidate they could have elbowed out Keiko Fujimori. But Peru is a country where personality decides elections rather than political party affiliations or ideologies. Its parties are weak, its political class considered extremely corrupt.

That opens the door for outsiders like Humala and Fujimori's father, Alberto. He vanquished hyperinflation and fanatical Shining Path rebels during his autocratic 1990-2000 presidency. A fifth of Peruvians revere the man, but his legacy of corruption hurt his congresswoman daughter. Humala harped on it.

He says he'll put crooked politicians in jail and make it easier for citizens to recall dishonest elected leaders.

Peru's best-known intellectual, 2010 Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, said Humala's win "saved democracy."

"What's important is that we have been freed from the return to power of a dictatorship that was terribly corrupt and bloody," he told CPN radio. "We should congratulate ourselves and celebrate."

Humala insists he'll steer Peru closer to the United States and Brazil than to Chavez's leftist camp, which includes Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, none of which currently have U.S. ambassadors.

Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, in Peru as an Organization of American States election observer, met with both candidates and said he didn't consider Humala another Chavez.

"He is a nationalist and an enigma with evolving views and a pragmatic streak," Richardson said. "I think he's educable and the business community should give him a chance."

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Associated Press writers Carla Salazar and Franklin Briceno contributed to this report.

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Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak.

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Peru vote: Fujimori daughter or leftist ex-soldier (AP)

LIMA, Peru – Peruvians are choosing in a presidential runoff Sunday between a leftist military man who promises to more equally distribute this Andean nation's mining wealth and the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Keiko Fujimori appeals largely to the pro-business status quo and to those who consider her father a hero for vanquishing hyperinflation and fanatical Shining Path rebels during his 1990-2000 rule. She would be Peru's first female leader.

Her rival, cashiered army Lt. Col. Ollanta Humala, is championed mainly by the one in three Peruvians who live in poverty, without running water, having benefited little from a mining boom that fueled economic growth averaging 7 percent annually since 2001.

Humala held a slim edge in two opinion polls released Saturday. One, by the Ipsos-Apoyo firm, gave him 52 percent to 48 percent for Keiko Fujimori. Its error margin was 1 1/2 percentage points.

Humala narrowly lost the 2006 presidential election to Alan Garcia, and got nearly a third of the vote in this election's April 10 first round. Fujimori came in second as three candidates split the centrist vote, combining for 45 percent.

Humala has the endorsement of former President Alejandro Toledo, who finished fourth. Fujimori is backed by third-place finisher Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a former prime minister and investment banker.

Both Humala and Keiko Fujimori, a congresswoman, are populists who promise a raft of giveaways for the poor, including free meals for schoolchildren and free preschool care.

But Humala, unlike his opponent, also insists on taxing windfall mining profits and exporting less natural gas so it is cheaper for Peruvians.

Humala has softened his rhetoric to make it less offensive to investors, and has backed down from early calls for renegotiating free trade agreements and rewriting the constitution.

He now disavows Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who openly backed him in 2006, and swears he's a democrat. The business community is spooked, though. It fears he would follow Chavez's playbook of seeking to cling to power while nationalizing industries and expropriating land.

Such things happened in 1968-75 in Peru under the leftist military dictatorship of Gen. Juan Velasco, a Chavez hero. At stake now, for starters, are the potential for losing more than $40 billion in investment pledged over the next decade for Peru's thriving mining sector.

Opposed to Keiko Fujimori are Peruvians who fear a return of the autocratic, kleptocratic regime over which her father presided. He is serving a 25-year sentence for authorizing death squads and kidnappings as well as corruption, and his daughter shares many of his former close advisers.

"She is a 36-year-old relatively unknown woman and the main draw is dad," said Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist in Peru for the election.

Human rights issues also dog Humala. He was accused but never tried for rights abuses as a counterinsurgency commander in the 1990s. And he encouraged, in a radio address from abroad, a 2005 revolt against Toledo by his now-imprisoned brother, Antauro, that claimed the lives of four policemen.

The campaign's last few weeks were marked by virulent mudslinging, insults and dirty tricks.

Humala accused Garcia of directly backing his opponent, letting her father run her campaign from his spacious detention quarters and suggesting state intelligence agents were eavesdropping on him.

Peru's largely business-friendly news media, meanwhile, made no attempt to mask its anti-Humala bias.

The Nobel-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was so angry about it that he pulled his commentary column from El Comercio, calling Peru's dominant newspaper a "propaganda machine" for Keiko Fujimori. He lost the 1990 election to her father.

While the Humala camp has indicated it could summon supporters into the streets if there were fraud, international vote monitors said Saturday they saw little possibility of serious fraud.

"The only possibilities of fraud come from what are called the voting tables, small type of fraud, but I think the institutions are in good shape here," said former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, an Organization of American States observer.

Keiko Fujimori was Peru's first lady from 1994, when her parents' marriage ended nastily, until her father resigned in disgrace six years later in a corruption scandal. She has expressed regret for abuses during her 72-year-old father's rule but still calls him Peru's best president.

She said when he was convicted in 2009 that she'd become president so she could pardon him, but has since reversed herself.

Ironically, Humala has said he would consider pardoning Alberto Fujimori, who had pre-cancerous growths removed from his tongue, if he were seriously ill.

Peru has one of Latin America's widest gulfs between rich and poor. Its mining bonanza is credited with expanding the economy 8.7 percent last year. But the wealth hardly reaches the rural highlands where most mines are, and where two in three live in poverty.

"The prosperity is fundamentally confined to the coast," said Cesar Hildebrandt, an outspoken veteran Peruvian journalist.

"Everything along the (Pacific) ocean has gotten better. Everything in the Andean part is the same or worse."

Strike leaders decided to put on hold for Sunday's election a nearly month-long road blockade in the southern highlands state of Puno by Aymara Indians demanding the cancellation of a Canadian-owned silver mine they believe will poison their water.

Their reasoning: Opinion polls give Humala better than 65 percent support in Puno. Protest leader Walter Aduviri told The Associated Press by telephone that he believed Humala would negotiate in good faith and Keiko Fujimori would exhibit the indifference his people have come to expect from faroff Lima.

"There has never been dialogue with us," Aduviri said. "They call us radicals but we're so forgotten that they only notice us when there are protests."

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Associated Press writer Franklin Briceno contributed to this report.

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Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak.

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