After his 1985-90 government left Peru "mired in guerrilla violence and economic chaos" Former President Alan Garcia has reportedly won back the office by defeating the populist ex-army officer endorsed by Venezuela's polarising president,Hugo Chavez.

"It was a surprising comeback for a man whose name had been equated with political disaster, and a rejection of a political upstart enthusiastically endorsed by Venezuela's anti-US president".

Garcia's lead of 55.5 per cent against 44.5 per cent for Ollanta Humala with 77.3 per cent of the vote counted appears conclusive, and was confirmed by the head of the Peruvian electoral agency, Magdalena Chu.

However, it is expected that the margin could shrink as Humala's support is strongest in rural areas where vote reporting is slower.

Unofficial partial counts by the polling firm Apoyo and the citizen watchdog group Transparencia had given the center- leftist Garcia more than 52 per cent of the vote.

Confidently, and before the first official results were announced, Garcia, 57, had thanked God and his supporters for what "appears to be a victory by the party of the people".

He believed his new mandate had sent an overwhelming message to President Hugo Chavez that Peruvians had rejected his "strategy of expansion of a militaristic, retrograde model he tried to impose in South America".

Humala, is deeply unpopular among upper-and middle-class Peruvians and has attacked the character of their established and naturally representative political parties as "corrupt and unresponsive to the needs of the poor".

Garcia, 57, built a winning strategy on a formidable campaigning machine which effectively turned the elections into a "referendum on the Chavez factor", depicting Humala as an "aspiring despot who would fall into lockstep with the Venezuelan's populist economics and Cuba-friendly anti-Americanism"