- Lead. Keiko Fujimori has won Peru’s June 7 presidential runoff with 51.73% of the vote against leftist Roberto Sánchez, according to official results reported from Lima.
- Fact. Turnout fell to 60.59% from 73.81% in the first round, with 8,006,073 votes for Fujimori and 7,470,812 for Sánchez — a margin of 3.46 percentage points.
- Stake. The result installs a hard-right government in a country that has cycled through nine heads of state in ten years, raising immediate questions about how Fujimori will manage a fragmented congress.
Peru’s voters delivered a verdict on Sunday that will define the country’s political direction for the next five years. Keiko Fujimori, the 51-year-old daughter of the imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori, secured 51.73% of the vote in the presidential runoff — a narrow but unambiguous win over Roberto Sánchez, the left-wing former trade minister, who received 48.27%, according to Al Jazeera’s coverage of the contest.
What the candidates stood for
Fujimori’s campaign was built on security. She proposed a 60-day national state of emergency, promised to dismantle organised criminal networks behind Peru’s rising extortion and homicide rates, and pledged that convicted prisoners would work for their food and board. Critics warned that such measures — reminiscent of her father’s 1990s administration, which combined rapid economic growth with widespread human rights abuses — would threaten judicial independence.
Sánchez, a former psychologist and congressman who served as trade minister under the impeached Pedro Castillo, offered a contrasting platform: police reform, reparations for victims of the Fujimorist era, and the drafting of a new constitution. His strongest support came from indigenous communities in the south and from urban progressives who feared Fujimori would use the presidency to pursue her family’s rehabilitation rather than genuine governance.
Turnout and the fraud question
Only 60.59% of registered voters took part in Sunday’s runoff, down from 73.81% in April’s first round. The gap reflected widespread conviction, expressed in voter interviews reported by Al Jazeera, that both candidates represented the “lesser evil.” Far-right candidate Rafael López Aliaga, who finished third in April, had launched a disinformation campaign alleging ballot-stuffing after being excluded from the runoff. European Union electoral observers investigated and found no irregularities in the first round, and Peru’s Jurado Nacional de Elecciones upheld the results. Official certification of the June 7 result is expected within days.
What comes next
As covered before the vote, Fujimori entered the runoff having won only 17% in a crowded first-round field — a relatively thin base from which to claim a governing mandate. She faces a congress fragmented across more than a dozen parties, none holding a majority. Building a legislative coalition has defeated several predecessors and contributed directly to the cycle of impeachments and forced resignations that has given Peru nine presidents in a decade. Whether Fujimori’s hard-right programme can command majority support in that chamber will be the first test of her presidency.