Peru’s electoral authority solidifies right-wing Fujimori’s narrow victory over left-wing Congress member Roberto Sanchez.
Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has been declared the winner of Peru’s presidential race by the country’s electoral court, the National Jury of Elections (JNE).
Friday’s announcement comes weeks after the June 7 run-off election against her left-wing rival, Congress member Roberto Sanchez.
Fujimori had a slight lead after the vote count ended earlier this week, and the official tally released on Friday shows a razor-thin victory. She took 9,223,000 votes to Sanchez’s 9,173,000.
“A new stage begins,” Fujimori wrote on the social media platform X on Friday.
“We assume it with responsibility, humility, and a deep sense of duty. Each day of this transition process is an opportunity to listen, engage in dialogue, and arrive prepared at the start of the new government.”
Fujimori is the daughter of the late former President Alberto Fujimori, who had been jailed for human rights abuses.
After running on a platform of cracking down on crime, she has promised to “unite the country”, which has dealt with years of political turmoil and a stagnating economy.
Fujimori and Sanchez reached the run-off vote after defeating 33 other candidates, a record-large field, in April’s general election.
But delays in April’s ballot distributions — and lengthy vote counts after both rounds of voting — have dogged the election, prompting different political interests to cry foul.
Sanchez, who had strong support among rural and Indigenous voters, alleged irregularities and fraud in the vote count, but he has not provided any evidence.
Instead, he has pointed to a change in election procedures as a sign of malfeasance. A new policy came into effect during the election that loosened the mandates around digitising overseas vote tallies.
Election monitors, however, caution that no proof of vote irregularities has emerged so far.
Reporting from the Peruvian capital Lima, Al Jazeera correspondent Mariana Sanchez pointed out that Fujimori’s victory was aided by a boost of overseas support.
“He [Roberto Sanchez] won the most amount of votes in Peru, but the votes from abroad took the balance in favour of Fujimori,” Al Jazeera’s Sanchez said.
She added that Sanchez may seek to rally his base in the coming weeks to have Fujimori swiftly impeached once she is sworn in.
Such impeachments have been common in Peru, where the constitution permits removing a president on broad grounds like “moral incapacity”.
Fujimori is set to become Peru’s ninth president in 10 years when she takes office in late July, on Peru’s independence day.
The left-wing Sanchez — a former cabinet member under imprisoned President Pedro Castillo — has already escalated his objections about the vote tallies to international bodies.
“He has taken his case to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, and he has said that he will open a resistance front here, a political and social resistance front,” Mariana Sanchez said.
But any push to impeach Fujimori will have to contend with shifting dynamics in Peru’s Congress.
Formerly a unicameral body, composed of a single Chamber of Deputies, the legislature will now reconstitute its Senate, which was dissolved under Fujimori’s father in the 1990s.
This month’s incoming Senate has 60 seats, divided between Fujimori’s right-wing Fuerza Popular party, Sanchez’s Juntos por el Peru party, and their respective allies.
For any impeachment to be successful, it will have to pass first the Chamber of Deputies and then the Senate with two-thirds votes.
“Really, the stability in this country depends on the Senate, because the Senate will have the power to impeach the government with 40 votes and the Senate is divided in two,” Mariana Sanchez said.
“So, we will see if the Senate decides to keep Fujimori for five years, or they will impeach her and continue the decade-long political instability in the country.”
The 51-year-old Fujimori had run for president in the country’s last three elections, but each time, she came up short.
Still, her tough-on-crime message appeared to connect this election cycle, as Peru faced a surge in organised crime, including an uptick in extortion, kidnappings and contract killings.
The administration of United States President Donald Trump, which has supported several right-wing candidates across Latin America, had backed Fujimori. Trump has endorsed an increasingly militarised approach to security in the region.
Fujimori has also been embraced by other right-wing leaders in Latin America, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.
The left-wing candidate has called for voting results from 119 consular offices to be nullified over a procedure change.
Daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori says the country is closer to ‘order and hope’ after prolonged vote count.
Peru’s conservative president-elect Keiko Fujimori vows that the ‘doors to dialogue will always be open.’
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