Keiko Fujimori Elected as Peru’s President in Fourth Attempt

Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late former president Alberto Fujimori and leader of the influential conservative party Popular Force, has been elected as the president of Peru. The National Jury of Elections confirmed on Friday that Fujimori secured 9,223,396 votes, while her rival, the progressive Roberto Sánchez from the party Together for Peru, garnered 9,173,755 votes. Fujimori won by a margin of nearly 50,000 votes in her fourth bid for the presidency.

At 50, the former first lady during her father’s government (1990-2000) and ex-congresswoman broke her streak of losses by presenting herself as the best option for restoring order. She appealed to the memory of her father’s administration in the 1990s when security forces defeated the terrorist group Shining Path.

“I decided to participate in this campaign because our country can’t tolerate any more improvisation, because our country lives in fear,”

she stated at the close of her electoral campaign in a popular area of Lima. Her promises focused on tackling crime with a “tough hand,” following the model of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. She vowed to build a prison similar to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center and to appoint judges with covered faces, a practice from her father’s tenure.

Peru is experiencing a growing wave of insecurity. Reports of extortion have quintupled while murders have doubled, according to official data from the past five years. Extortion affects small merchants and public transportation lines, with 239 drivers killed in extortion cases in 2025.

Fujimori also proposed unlocking major mining projects by reducing bureaucratic procedures to attract investment and boost employment. She aims to encourage agro-export by expanding irrigation projects in the arid coastal areas of the Pacific.

Her opponents argue that Peru has endured political crises over the last decade due to her ambitions and the actions of her parliamentary faction. The party played a key role in pushing for the resignation of former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018) and voted for the removal of almost all subsequent presidents, including Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020), Pedro Castillo (2021-2022), and Dina Boluarte (2022-2025). Boluarte faced seven removal requests, and when her popularity plummeted to 3%, her vacancy was voted upon.

Keiko Fujimori previously sought the presidency of Peru in 2011, 2016, and 2021. Each time she advanced to the runoff and was defeated by Ollanta Humala (2011-2016), Kuczynski, and Castillo, respectively.

Entering politics at a young age, she became the first lady at 19 in 1994 after her parents separated amid scandal, following her mother’s claims of military torture ordered by her husband.

Alberto Fujimori passed away in 2024, a year after being released from over 16 years of imprisonment for corruption and the murder of 25 people by an army squad combating Shining Path from 1991 to 1992.

Keiko launched her candidacy last year after the Constitutional Court filed away an investigation against her on alleged money laundering charges linked to the Brazilian company Odebrecht and other sources. The court ruled the accusation lacked “legal grounds” as the charge of “asset reception” laundering was not penalized before 2016, when the incidents allegedly occurred.