Fujimori wins runoff election by @50K votes!
Peruvian diaspora handed the Presidency to Keiko Fujimori.
Lima, Jun 29 (EFE).-
Vote counting for the second round of Peru’s presidential election concluded on Monday, 22 days after the June 7 election, confirming the victory of right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori over left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez by a narrow margin of 49,641 votes.
With 100% of the votes counted by Peru’s National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), Fujimori obtained 50.135% of the valid votes, receiving 9,223,396 votes, compared to 49.865% for Sánchez, who received a total of 9,173,755 votes.
This is the third consecutive presidential election in Peru to be decided by fewer than 50,000 votes.
The National Elections Board (JNE) plans to officially announce the results on Friday, July 3, at a ceremony where Fujimori will be declared the country’s president-elect.
On July 15, she will receive her credentials, and on July 28, she will be sworn in at a ceremony in Parliament to mark Peru’s National Day.
The daughter and political heir of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000) succeeded on her fourth presidential bid, after losing in the runoff of the three previous presidential elections to Ollanta Humala (2011), Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016), and Pedro Castillo (2021).
However, Sánchez, who was running in this election on behalf of the imprisoned former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022, has announced that he will not recognize Fujimori as president, alleging, without evidence, fraud in the overseas vote, which he unsuccessfully sought to have annulled, as doing so would have handed the victory to him, since he received the most votes within the country.
Fujimori thus emerged victorious in the most complex presidential election in Peru’s history, which featured 35 candidates and saw her receive the most votes in the first round with just 17.19%, followed by Sánchez with 12.03%.
Keiko Fujimori’s victory will allow her to govern the country for the next five years (2026–2031), following a decade of political instability during which Peru has had eight presidents in ten years, due to a succession of presidential impeachments initiated by Parliament, most of them with votes from the Fujimori faction.
This marks the return of Fujimorism to power 25 years after her father resigned via fax from Japan, following the exposure of a massive corruption scandal in his administration that subsequently led to his conviction and a 25-year prison sentence for that offense and for crimes against humanity.
The leader and candidate of the Fujimori-aligned Popular Force party ran a campaign with the main promise of “restoring order” at a time when Peruvians’ primary concern has become public insecurity due to the surge in organized crime. EFE
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