Peru went to the polls for the runoff in its presidential election more than a week ago, on 7 June. But I’ve held off posting about it because the result, yet again, was extraordinarily close. Only now can we clearly call it as a win for Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the late dictator Alberto Fujimori.
Peru has been through a chaotic period lately, with eight presidents in the last ten years. Pedro Castillo won the job at the last election, in 2021, but was impeached and removed the following year after trying to do an end run around the constitution. Incumbent José María Balcázar is the third replacement since then, as chronic conflict between executive and legislature made the country ungovernable.
This year’s first round, held on 12 and 13 April, demonstrated the fractured nature of Peruvian politics with five candidates scoring between 10% and 20%. Fujimori had a clear lead with 17.2%, while the far left’s Roberto Sánchez narrowly edged out the far right’s Rafael López Aliaga for second place, 12.0% to 11.9%. Centrist Jorge Nieto was fourth with 11.0%, followed by the centre-left’s Ricardo Belmont with 10.1%.
In 2021, Fujimori had trailed by five and a half points on the first round but almost won, finishing with 49.87% in the runoff. Five years earlier it had been even closer, when she got to 49.88%. Even her first attempt, in 2011, had been very close, although not quite in that league: she lost with 48.55%. So it was hard not to have some sympathy with her as she made her fourth attempt.
And sure enough, it was a nailbiter again. The pattern was the same as last time: Fujimori led early, but Sánchez overtook her later in the count as votes from more rural areas came in. By the Tuesday morning, with around 95% counted, Sánchez was about 30,000 votes in front. But that wasn’t going to be enough, because the last few returns were disproportionately from expatriate voters and from the capital, Lima – both strong areas for Fujimori.
By Friday Fujimori had hit the front; at one point she led by just 651 votes out of more than 18 million, or 50.002%. That’s now out to about 18,500 votes, or 50.051%. All the returns are in, but 1,305 of them (1.41% of the total) are still to be included because they’re waiting for adjudication by the electoral tribunal. The majority of those are from Lima, so Fujimori will improve her position, but it will probably still, for the third time running, be within a couple of tenths of a per cent. Although various media organisations have called her as the winner, Sánchez is yet to concede defeat.
Whether her prior succession of defeats have mellowed Fujimori, or whether she is determined to follow in her father’s authoritarian footsteps, only time will tell. Like her predecessors, she is unlikely to have an easy time with the legislature; the Senate (newly reconstituted after having been abolished in 1993) will be evenly divided between left and right, while the lower house will have a left and centre-left majority.
And while we’re on South America, a quick note on Colombia, which held the first round of its presidential election a fortnight ago. It too will face a contest of the extremes: Trumpist Abelardo de la Espriella topped the poll with 43.7%, some 670,000 votes ahead of leftist Iván Cepeda (40.9%), with whom he will contest the second round next Sunday. Most of the votes of third placegetter Paloma Valencia should flow to de la Espriella, who will start a strong favorite.
The World is Not Enough 