After three failed presidential campaigns, years of legal troubles and over a decade as a polarizing opposition leader, Keiko Fujimori has finally won the nation’s highest office by becoming Peru’s first woman elected president.
Her victory brings the political movement founded by her late father back to power a quarter century after the collapse of his authoritarian government.
According to a final vote count published by the electoral authorities on Monday, Ms. Fujimori, 51, defeated her leftist opponent, Roberto Sánchez, by 49,641 votes, ending one of the closest elections in the country’s history. The result is expected to be formally certified by the nation’s top electoral court on Friday.
“We are getting closer and closer to starting a path of order and hope for all Peruvians,” Ms. Fujimori wrote on social media.
When Ms. Fujimori takes office on July 28, she will join a growing bloc of conservative Latin American leaders, reinforcing a rightward shift across the region and potentially bolstering President Trump’s efforts to expand U.S. influence in the hemisphere.
Mr. Sánchez said last week he would refuse to concede, claiming without evidence that Ms. Fujimori owed her victory to a conspiracy to tamper with votes cast abroad, where she enjoys strong support. The electoral authorities and international observers have rejected the claim.
Ms. Fujimori will inherit a country battered by years of political instability, rising violent crime and deep distrust of the political class. She has promised to restore order with the same uncompromising approach that supporters credit her father, Alberto Fujimori, with using to defeat the Maoist insurgency known as the Shining Path in the 1990s.
The election was a choice between “order or chaos,” she repeated during the campaign.
For supporters, Ms. Fujimori represents a return to strong leadership after years of revolving-door governments. Critics see her as the heir to an authoritarian political movement that weakened democratic institutions and whose own record as an opposition leader suggests she could further erode Peru’s feeble democracy and the rule of law.
The result underscored how divided the country is. The race was the third closest presidential runoff in Peru’s 204-year history, followed only by the elections she narrowly lost in 2016 and 2021.
The outcome was also historic in another respect: Ms. Fujimori is the first Peruvian president elected despite receiving fewer votes inside Peru than her opponent.
Her victory was driven by strong support from Peruvians living abroad, many of whom emigrated to the United States and Europe during the economic crises and political violence of the 1980s and 1990s.
“Within Peru, she didn’t win,’’ said Patricia Zárate, a Peruvian political analyst. “That’s going to be hard to accept for an important part of the population.’’
Amid growing consensus that she would prevail this month, Ms. Fujimori promised to represent all Peruvians. “We have to understand that our country is fragmented and above all, build bridges of unity,” she told journalists.
It is unclear if Peruvians believe her.
“It’s always said that you shouldn’t trust a politician, but Keiko Fujimori in particular has developed a reputation as someone who can’t be trusted,” Ms. Zárate said. “That’s something she’s going to struggle with. She’s going to have to admit — as she started to do in her campaign — that she’s made mistakes.”
Over the past 15 years, even as Ms. Fujimori lost successive presidential bids, she became one of Peru’s most influential politicians — more powerful perhaps, than the revolving door of actual presidents. (Peru has cycled through nine presidents since 2016.)
Popular Force, the party she founded after her father was imprisoned for human rights abuses, has become one of the country’s most disciplined political forces — a rarity in a country known for fluid political alliances. It has used its strength in Congress to oust four presidents while shielding political allies from corruption investigations.
After losing the 2021 election to a leftist candidate, Pedro Castillo, Ms. Fujimori spent weeks claiming widespread electoral fraud without evidence and trying to annul votes from largely poor Andean regions.
Those episodes have helped cement her image among many Peruvians as a politician willing to manipulate institutions to consolidate power.
“She already has all the power, and we’ve seen what she does with power when she gets it,” Adriana Lopez, a 25-year-old university student, said. “She uses it to get more power, and more power. And now she’s president.”
Mr. Sanchez earned overwhelming support in many rural and predominantly Indigenous regions. Voters there blame Ms. Fujimori and Peru’s conservative political establishment for backing the government whose crackdown on protests after Mr. Castillo’s impeachment and arrest killed dozens of civilians.
But Monday’s announcement represented a long-awaited vindication of her father’s legacy for “Fujimoristas” who regard him as a hero who saved the country from economic ruin. Many see Ms. Fujimori as a much needed check on the corrupt and inept left-leaning leaders who succeeded him.
“Her father would be proud of her,” said Yolanda Díaz, a business administrator in the capital Lima. “She has persisted for the good of Peru in the face of hatred and lies from the left.”
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