Ollanta Humala on course to win Peru presidential poll

Unofficial results give leftwing former soldier a narrow lead in runoff, with 51.3% of the vote against 48.7% for Keiko Fujimori

Ollanta Humala appeared on course to narrowly win Peru's presidential election after moderating his firebrand leftwing image and promising to rule from the centre.
Unofficial results on Monday gave the former army officer 51.3% of the vote against 48.7% for Keiko Fujimori, the rightwing daughter of a disgraced former president, after a bruising campaign that polarised the country.
Humala's supporters celebrated on Sunday night hours after polls closed, and Fujimori said she would concede – and not demand a recount – if official results confirmed the exit polls and unofficial tallies.
Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, did not waitto welcome the arrival of a fellow leftwing leader. "The great victory of Humala is the result of the people's struggle for dignity and sovereignty," he said.
Humala won overwhelming support from impoverished indigenous voters in Andean highlands who feel left out by Peru's mining-driven economic boom. He promised to share wealth more equally without frightening investors.
The government of outgoing president, Alan Garcia, said it had a "contingency plan" to stabilise markets lest they panic at the prospect of a leftist populist who in a previous election modelled himself on Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. This time around Humala, 48, a former lieutenant colonel, traded red T-shirts and socialist rhetoric for sober suits and imitation of Brazil's former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Humala and Fujimori, 36, were reviled by many Peruvians as dangerous demagogues but centrist candidates cancelled each other out in the first round, putting the two populists from opposite ends of the political spectrum into Sunday's runoff.
Mario Vargas Llosa, the Nobel laureate, called it a choice between cancer and Aids but backed Humala to "save democracy" on the grounds that Fujimori would bring back the worst aspects of the rule of her father, Alberto, who is in jail for corruption and human rights abuses during his presidency in the 1990s.
"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."
Fujimori dropped a pledge to pardon her father and said she would respect judicial independence and other institutions guaranteeing Peru's democracy. She appeared to win most votes in the capital, Lima, and in other coastal areas but trailed badly in rural areas.
Business elites and some big media groups backed the young senator as the best bet for keeping a status quo that has turned Peru into South America's economic tiger. They accused Vargas Llosa of being duped by Humala's newly professed moderation.
Both candidates promised anti-poverty measures including free school meals and childcare. Humala also insisted on taxing windfall mining profits but dropped plans to renegotiate free trade agreements and rewrite the constitution with a leftist tilt.
Tarred by Fujimori as Chávez's poodle, during the campaign Humala swore on the Bible to respect democracy and press freedom. "I will be a president who acts only within the constitution and the rule of law," he said. He promised to steer Peru closer to the US and Brazil than to Venezuela and its leftist allies in the region.
Bill Richardson, a former New Mexico governor who was in Lima as an Organisation of American States election observer, played down concerns about Humala. "He is a nationalist and an enigma with evolving views and a pragmatic streak," he told reporters. "I think he's educable and the business community should give him a chance."

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk