"Alan Presidente!" chanted hundreds of people gathered in Lima's San Martin Square in the early hours of yesterday morning, celebrating the surprise second-place vote for Mr Alan Garcia in Sunday's presidential ballot.
Mr Garcia, who was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990, qualified for the June run-off poll, winning 25.7 per cent of voter preferences. The poll was described as "absolutely impartial" by foreign observers, while the turnout was high, estimated at 80 per cent of the nation's 15 million eligible voters.
"Toledo Pachacutec!" chanted hundreds more Peruvians, invoking the spirit of Inca emperor Pachacutec in celebration of Mr Alejandro Toledo's first-round victory, with 36 per cent of votes, a figure slightly below most poll predictions.
Mr Garcia defeated the rightwing candidate, Ms Lourdes Flores, who scored 23.5 per cent, in a nail-biting finish to a campaign marked by insult and slander.
Mr Toledo visited Mr Garcia on election night, a friendly exchange in which both candidates agreed to work out a civility pact to keep the coming campaign clean. The two leading candidates must compete for Ms Flores's conservative vote, which will be decisive in the final round.
Mr Toledo, who has fought five presidential election battles, was twice robbed of victory through electoral fraud. He could be forgiven for feeling disappointment, even as he celebrated his first-round victory.
"Nothing has come easy to me in my life," said Mr Toledo, pondering the loss of 10 per cent of the votes he won last year, when competing against president Alberto Fujimori, who has since been ousted from office.
The growing momentum of Mr Garcia's candidacy took the champagne edge off Mr Toledo's victory, as analysts calculated that Mr Garcia's comeback could yet upset Mr Toledo's aspirations.
"Toledo was an invention of the struggle against Fujimori," said a Peruvian political analyst, Mr Carlos Tapia, "but he has been unable to transform himself into a presidential figure."
Peruvian voters have a perverse attraction to the electoral underdog, a tendency which helped a political outsider, Mr Fujimori, to a shock victory in 1990. The same unpredictable voting pattern contributed to Mr Toledo's remarkable showing against Mr Fujimori last year, defying censorship and fraud to force the dictator into a second-round run-off. This time, however, Peruvians may view Mr Garcia as the underdog who defied political gravity to come within spitting distance of a second term in office.
Meanwhile, Mr Fujimori's vote virtually disappeared as his "Popular Solution" candidate scored less than 2 per cent in Sunday's vote.