Peru's National Elections Board (JNE) officially confirmed on Sunday that right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and left-wing congressman Roberto Sánchez will face each other in a presidential runoff on June 7, following a turbulent first round of voting on April 12 that took more than a month to certify.
Fujimori, a 50-year-old congresswoman and candidate for the Fuerza Popular party, finished first with 17.19 percent of the vote — roughly 2.8 million ballots. Sánchez, a 57-year-old psychologist and former foreign trade minister running under the Juntos por el Perú banner, came second with 12.03 percent, edging out far-right candidate and former Lima mayor Rafael López Aliaga by just over 21,000 votes. Because no candidate secured more than half of all valid votes, a runoff was required under Peruvian law. The two candidates will now need to build broad coalitions: more than 70 percent of first-round voters backed neither of them.
The prolonged count was dogged by logistical failures — polling stations in parts of Lima had to reopen the following day after materials failed to arrive — and by persistent fraud allegations, primarily from López Aliaga, who declared the results fraudulent and called for the entire first round to be annulled. Electoral observers from the European Union found no evidence of fraud, and the JNE acknowledged operational shortcomings while pledging improvements. "We cannot deny that there were many difficulties and flaws in the logistical deployment," said JNE President Roberto Burneo, adding that a committee of national and international experts would oversee the second round.
The two finalists represent sharply opposed political visions. Fujimori, running for a presidential runoff for the fourth time, is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. She has proposed tough-on-crime measures — including reviving her father's controversial system of anonymous "faceless judges" — and has adopted an anti-immigration stance. Sánchez presents himself as the political heir of Pedro Castillo, the former president who was impeached and imprisoned after attempting a self-coup in 2022. Sánchez has promised to pursue a new constitution, greater regional autonomy, and increased state control over natural resources, and has vowed to seek Castillo's release if elected. Complicating his campaign, Peru's public prosecutor's office filed financial crime charges against Sánchez last week, alleging false declarations related to campaign contributions between 2018 and 2020; a court is expected to decide on May 27 whether the case will proceed to trial. Sánchez has denied all wrongdoing.
The runoff takes place against the backdrop of a deep and prolonged political crisis. Peru has seen eight or nine presidents in roughly a decade, most removed or forced out amid corruption scandals and clashes between the executive and a powerful Congress. A sharp rise in violent crime — the homicide rate doubled over the past decade — has become the dominant concern for voters. Security, institutional stability, and sharp regional divides between Lima and the poorer rural south are likely to define the coming weeks of campaigning ahead of the June 7 vote, with the winner expected to be inaugurated in July.