One candidate from the right and another from the left will face off after the first round of Peru’s presidential election. But most voters chose neither of them.
Is Peru ready for another Fujimori?
After three days of counting following an election marred by logistical problems, Peru faces a presidential election runoff in June between conservative Keiko Fujimori and left-wing congressman Roberto Sánchez. Although they led a field of 35 candidates, the pair won less than 30 per cent of the vote between them, with Fujimori on 17 per cent and Sánchez on 12 per cent.
Voting had to be extended for a day after tens of thousands were unable to vote on Sunday, prompting the far-right Rafael López Aliaga, who came a close third, to cry foul. But European Union election observers gave the election a clean bill of health, saying they found no concrete evidence of fraud.
Fujimori, who is the daughter of the late, Washington-backed dictator Alberto Fujimori, has reached the presidential runoff three times before and lost each time. But she may have a better chance this time and her 17 per cent vote share is an improvement on the 13.4 per cent she won in the first round in 2021.
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Although Fujimori’s father was jailed for human rights abuses including ordering death squads to conduct two massacres, she embraces his memory and she visited his grave on election day.
“I miss him. But everywhere I go, people remind me of him and tell me anecdotes, which is the loveliest thing,” she told AFP
“What I love most is when they say ‘her father came and the dog bit him’ or ‘her father came and I stepped on him’.”
Peru has had eight presidents in the past decade, four of whom were impeached and three of whom are currently serving time in prison. Among those behind bars is Pedro Castillo, a left-wing populist who tried to dissolve congress and rule by decree in 2022.
Sánchez has promised that if elected he will pardon Castillo, who remains popular in the poor Andean communities that form a central part of the left-wing candidate’s political base. Sánchez’s support is lower than Castillo’s was in 2021 and his success will depend on whether he can harness enduring anti-Fujimori sentiment to persuade voters in big cities to back him.
Sunday also saw elections to Peru’s 130-seat chamber of deputies and, for the first time in three decades, to a 60-seat senate. Fujimori’s conservatives and López Aliaga’s far-right party seem to have won a majority in the senate between them but in the lower house, a combination of leftists and centrists could deny the right its majority.
Despite the political turbulence of recent years, Peru’s economy has performed well and grew by more than 3 per cent last year, partly because it is one of the world’s biggest copper producers. And while the country has cycled through presidents over the past decade, it has had the same central bank governor since 2006 and the country has maintained an orthodox macroeconomic framework with fiscal discipline and an open investment regime.
The election will be watched closely from Washington, where the Trump administration will hope Fujimori will move the country closer to the United States and curb China’s economic influence. But China has been Peru’s biggest trading partner for more than a decade and neither of the presidential candidates is likely to abandon Lima’s pragmatic, economically driven approach to relations with Beijing.
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