Humala wins Peru 1st round, 2nd place up for grabs

LIMA (Reuters) - Left-wing nationalist Ollanta Humala won the first round of Peru's presidential election on Sunday but there was a tight race to see who would face him in a June run-off, early official results and unofficial counts showed.

With 18 percent of votes tallied, officials said Humala had 26.5 percent of the votes, followed by former finance minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at 24.5 percent and rightist lawmaker Keiko Fujimori at 21.1 percent.

That would mean a June 5 run-off between Humala and Kuczynski, but three unofficial quick counts said Fujimori would advance with a lead of 2 to 4 points over Kuczynski. Analysts said official results were skewed by votes in the capital of Lima, where Kuczynski is strongest.

Despite a decade-long economic boom, a third of Peruvians live in poverty and many rallied behind Humala, a former army officer who has positioned himself as a man of the people opposite rivals backed by big business.

Fujimori, 35, favors free-market policies, but is shunned by many Peruvians because her father, former president Alberto Fujimori, is in prison for corruption and human rights crimes stemming from his crackdown on guerrillas in the 1990s.

Humala, 48, who led a short-lived military revolt in 2000, has moderated his anti-capitalist tone since narrowly losing the 2006 elections.

Humala has surged in the race by shedding his hardline image and recasting himself as a soft-left leader in the vein of former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. He says he has mellowed and distanced himself from his former political mentor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Humala's rivals have sought to hurt his chances by saying he would step up state control over the economy, rolling back reforms and jeopardizing some $40 billion of foreign investment lined up for the next decade in mining and energy exploration.

Such warnings have spooked better-off Peruvians, who are enjoying relative wealth and stability after years of hyperinflation and guerrilla wars during the 1980s and 1990s.

Humala got 30 percent of the vote in the first round in 2006 before losing the runoff by 5 percentage points to President Alan Garcia, who cannot run again this year but has said he wants to make a bid in 2016.

This year's second round could be just as tight. Polls have shown a run-off pitching Humala against Fujimori or Kuczynski would be a virtual tie.

Kuczynski, 72, a former prime minister who is known as "El Gringo" because of his European parents, could have trouble gaining traction outside of Lima, where he is strongly backed by wealthy voters.

Both Humala and Fujimori have disapproval ratings of about 50 percent, the worst in the race, leading some to describe a run-off between them as "the nightmare scenario."

(Additional reporting by Patricia Velez, Caroline Stauffer, Marco Aquino and Teresa Cespedes; Writing by Terry Wade and Helen Popper; Editing by Anthony Boadle)