Keiko Fujimori Elected as Peru’s President

Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former president Alberto Fujimori and leader of the influential conservative party Fuerza Popular, has been elected as Peru’s president. On Friday, the National Jury of Elections confirmed that Fujimori received 9,223,396 votes, while her rival, the progressive Roberto Sánchez from the Juntos por el Perú party, got 9,173,755 votes. Fujimori won by a margin of nearly 50,000 votes, succeeding in her fourth attempt to attain power.

At 50 years old, Fujimori, who previously served as a first lady during her father’s administration (1990-2000) and as a congresswoman, broke her streak of defeats by positioning herself as the candidate who could restore order. She tapped into the nostalgia for her father’s leadership during the 1990s, when security forces defeated the terrorist group Shining Path.

“I decided to participate in this campaign because our country can no longer tolerate amateurs, because our country lives in fear,”

she said during the closing of her electoral campaign in a popular area of Lima. Her campaign promises focused on combating crime with strict measures, following the model of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. She vowed to build a prison akin to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center and implement masked judges as happened during her father’s government.

Peru is facing a growing wave of insecurity. Reports of extortion have increased fivefold, while murders have doubled according to official data from the past five years. Extortion often impacts small business owners and public transport operators. In 2025, 239 drivers were killed in extortion-related incidents.

Fujimori also proposed unlocking large mining projects by reducing bureaucratic barriers to attract investments and boost employment. Additionally, she aimed to encourage agro-exportation by expanding irrigation works in arid areas of the Pacific coast.

Her opponents argue that Peru has endured a political crisis over the last decade due to Fujimori’s ambitions and her party’s actions in Congress, which allegedly contributed to the resignation or removal of several presidents. Fujimori’s party, along with others, played a key role in pushing former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) to resign and voting for the removal of nearly all subsequent leaders, including Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020), Pedro Castillo (2021-2022), and Dina Boluarte (2022-2025). Boluarte was shielded from seven removal requests, but when her popularity dropped to 3%, she was ousted.

Keiko Fujimori pursued the presidency of Peru in 2011, 2016, and 2021. She reached the second round in each attempt but was defeated by Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Kuczynski, and Castillo.

Entering politics at a young age, Fujimori became first lady at 19 following her parents’ separation amid a scandal when her mother claimed she had been tortured by the military on her husband’s orders.

Alberto Fujimori passed away in 2024, a year after being released from prison where he served over 16 years for corruption and for the execution of 25 people by an army squad during the fight against Shining Path between 1991 and 1992.

Fujimori launched her presidential candidacy after the Constitutional Tribunal dismissed an investigation against her for the alleged crime of money laundering linked to the Brazilian company Odebrecht and other sources. The court stated the fiscal accusation lacked legal merit since laundering through ‘asset reception’ had not been penalized before 2016 when the events allegedly occurred.