ONPE offices in Peru. File photo.
The secretary general of Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Elar Bolaños, has resigned after alleging manipulation of his computer equipment and alteration of documents related to requests in the institution’s document management system.
“There are serious issues related to the manipulation of my computer equipment with information that I neither generated nor drafted,” he stated in an open letter containing both his resignation and the serious accusations.
Bolaños warns of the “constant influx of requests through the compromised document management system, which has seriously compromised personal data, affecting the proper processing and management of these requests.”
“I emphasize the seriousness of the events related to false evidence that is not connected to my actions or conduct,” he stated. “There are many documents with altered information, which I did not generate. I am making myself available to the justice system for the corresponding investigations.”
He warns that this situation puts the ONPE (National Office of Electoral Processes) and the execution of the regional and municipal elections scheduled for October of this year at “serious risk.”
He explained that the breach of his systems caused errors in files and difficulties in their processing, resulting in delays in responding to requests.
Bolaños had been serving as Secretary General of the ONPE for almost six years, since September 2, 2020, and therefore held the position during the 2021 presidential elections, the 2022 regional and municipal elections, and the first and second rounds of the 2026 presidential elections, which have not yet been decided.
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Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/CB/SL
Cameron Baillie is an award-winning journalist, editor, and researcher. He won and was shortlisted for awards across Britain and Ireland. He is Editor-in-Chief of New Sociological Perspectives graduate journal and Commissioning Editor at The Student Intifada newsletter. He spent the first half of 2025 living, working, and writing in Ecuador. He does news translation and proofreading work with The Orinoco Tribune.
