Electoral body confirms right-wing victory in Peru elections

The announcement was made by the National Electoral Council (JNE), the country’s highest electoral authority. The conservative leader defeated the leftist Roberto Sánchez by a narrow margin of 49,641 votes.

The JNE approved the results after Sánchez’s unsuccessful attempts to block the process. He alleged, without evidence, electoral fraud and demanded the annulment of votes abroad, which would have given him victory, since he received the majority of votes in the country.

The announcement of the results this Friday implies the end of the electoral process, with no possibility of reversing the result, in which Fujimori obtained 50.135% of the valid votes, with 9,223,396 votes, against 49.865% for Sánchez, who received 9,173,755 votes.

The next step in the electoral process will be the delivery of credentials to Fujimori, in a ceremony scheduled for July 15 at the Gran Teatro Nacional, in Lima. The presidential inauguration will take place on July 28, Peru’s Independence Day, when Fujimori will begin his five-year term (2026-2031), with Luis Galarreta as first vice president and Miguel Torres as second vice president.

Thus, Fujimorism will return to power almost 26 years after the resignation of Alberto Fujimori by fax, from Japan, as a result of the discovery of a corruption scandal in his government, after having been re-elected for a third term amid accusations of fraud.

Keiko Fujimori won the presidency of Peru in his fourth attempt, after losing in the second round of the three previous elections to the leftist Ollanta Humala (2011), the rightist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016) and the leftist Pedro Castillo (2021).

The last two elections were decided by 42,000 and 44,000 votes, respectively, making this the third consecutive election in which the presidency was decided by fewer than 50,000 votes, in a country with more than 33 million inhabitants and more than 27.3 million registered voters.

One of Fujimori’s main campaign promises is the fight against organized crime, the main concern of Peruvians and an issue that has increasingly gained ground in Latin America.