Source : Perth Now news
After weeks of protests, fraud accusations and contested ballots, conservative Keiko Fujimori has been officially declared the winner of Peru’s presidential race.
Fujimori won just past 50 per cent of the vote in the June 7 runoff to clinch the nation’s top office in her fourth run for the presidency, just ahead of leftist congressman Roberto Sanchez, with a difference of about 50,000 votes out of 18 million.
The slim margin is a reversal from the narrow loss Fujimori suffered in 2021, when she fell short by about 45,000 votes to former leftist President Pedro Castillo.
Castillo was impeached and jailed for trying to dissolve Congress in 2022. Sanchez is widely seen as Castillo’s political heir and has said he will not recognise Fujimori’s government after claiming electoral fraud, without providing evidence.
Sanchez, boosted by voters from Peru’s rural regions, led the race earlier in the count, while Fujimori was boosted by voters in the capital region of Lima and also led votes cast by overseas ballot by a wide margin.
The drawn-out race has highlighted the country’s deep polarisation and political instability that led to the ousting of several presidents over the last decade.
Fujimori’s win reaffirms Latin America’s rightward shift, and other conservative leaders in the region, including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Chile’s Jose Antonio Kast and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, have congratulated the president-elect.
Her victory was also welcomed by markets, which had been rattled by the prospect of a Sanchez win. A Moodys report says Fujimori’s election could help unlock delayed mining projects in Peru, which is the world’s third-largest copper producer.
Fujimori, 51, is the daughter of late President Alberto Fujimori, who governed the country with an iron fist from 1990 to 2000 and was credited with defeating Maoist insurgents and taming runaway hyperinflation.
But the Fujimoris are still a controversial dynasty in Peru. Alberto served 16 years in prison for human-rights abuses and Keiko spent years under investigation over campaign financing allegations, which were dropped last year. She was imprisoned multiple times between 2018 and 2020 during the investigation, spending nearly a year and a half in jail.
Fujimori will now be tasked with uniting a polarised nation. The country also faces a vast economic divide between the capital of Lima and rural areas, where heavy protests and clashes with security forces killed over 60 people after Castillo was removed from office.
