LIMA, Peru — Fraud was on the lips of Peruvians in the capital streets after election officials said President Alberto Fujimori was just shy of the majority of votes needed to win a third term.

"The government was manipulating it all from the start, sending us out to vote as if we were marionettes when they had it all planned, a giant fraud," said Carolina Herrera, a special education teacher in a poor Lima neighborhood.

Officials said Tuesday that with 77 percent of the ballots counted, Fujimori had 49.85 percent, compared to Alejandro Toledo's 40.41. Exit polls and unofficial vote tallies by independent monitors after Sunday's election indicated Fujimori would receive less support than he did and not reach the 50 percent plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff.

The first results were made public Monday at midday, more than 12 hours later than election officials had promised, prompting suspicion of dirty play.

"They took too long to count the ballots," said Renzo Lopez, a 28-year-old manager of a food wholesale company. "That delay gave them the time to manipulate the numbers."

Those suspicions exploded in a violent protest by some 4,000 people outside the presidential palace Monday. Later in the day, Peruvians huddled in large groups in the main plaza across from the palace debating whether the fix was already in.

Fujimori rejected the findings of the exit polls and election monitors, but Toledo said that the electoral process had lost all credibility.

Toledo said his political group would refuse to recognize the election board's final count "no matter what the outcome." The vote was expected to continue filtering in during the week.

Opinion polls had showed a majority of Peruvians believed fraud would play a part in the election going into Sunday's ballot.

Accusations that Peruvian election authorities helped oversee the forgery of more than 1 million signatures to register his candidacy have already drawn calls from the U.S. State Department for an investigation.

For months, opposition candidates accused Fujimori and his military intelligence service of disrupting rallies with rock-throwing thugs, sponsoring lurid tabloid newspaper attacks and blocking access to television and radio. International monitors also said Fujimori used government funds and food aid programs to rally support — charges he denied.

Unofficial vote counts Sunday night by Transparencia, an independent citizens group, and by three private polling firms had given Fujimori at the most 48.7 percent.

"If a second round is ruled out, we have every right to believe that there was a well-thought-out fraud," Transparencia director Rafael Roncagliolo said Monday.

Roncagliolo said monitors had discovered pre-filled ballots favoring Fujimori during Sunday's vote and that Transparencia's electricity and phone lines were cut and that its computer system was attacked by a mysterious virus.

U.S. Ambassador John Hamilton said he has "a great deal of trust" in Transparencia's count and expects a second round. Eduardo Stein, head of an Organization of American States monitoring mission, also said a second round should take place according to its own independent figures.

Pollster Giovanna Penaflor cautioned that early returns were most likely from Lima, Fujimori's stronghold, and that later returns from other cities could show a decline in the president's performance.

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But the early results did not include isolated rural areas, also considered pro-Fujimori because of his government's heavy investment in schools, health clinics and market roads.

After 10 years in power, the 61-year-old leader still has support from a wide segment of Peruvians grateful to him for defeating the Maoist Shining Path insurgency and halting hyperinflation and the economic chaos of the 1980s.

"You don't think that Colombia wouldn't love to have a Fujimori to take care of its guerrilla problem?" said Juan Carlos Cardenas, a 49-year-old fish vendor who rejected the fraud allegations. "He made Peru livable again."

But Toledo, who battled his way out of poverty in an Andean village to become an international economist, has cut into Fujimori's bedrock support among the poor, capitalizing on a deep two-year recession. The 54-year-old former World Bank official has promised to create at least 400,000 jobs by lowering taxes to spur business investment.

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