Peru grapples with selecting new leader amid ongoing election chaos
Two weeks after ballot, votes are still being counted, the election chief has quit and claims of manipulation are widespread
Joe Daniels in Bogotá
Peru has endured a revolving door of nine presidents in a decade, while four ex-leaders are in jail.
The country’s politicians are collectively so unpopular that the current presidential frontrunner is set for a vote share of 17 per cent.
Now the country is struggling to even select its next leader, as results continue to trickle in almost two weeks after voters went to the polls.
The election chief has quit and his home has been raided by police, while claims of manipulation are rife.
Observers of Peru’s tumultuous politics warn that the public is becoming inured to near-constant scandal.
Alongside the election turbulence, the country’s foreign and defence ministers resigned this week in a dispute over the procurement of US fighter jets.
Rodolfo Rojas, who runs local political risk consultancy Sequoia, said the problem with the election was that “no one believes, or everyone questions, the legitimacy of the process, especially its results, because delays in opening polling stations have raised suspicion.
“So now we’re on standby for whatever comes next.”
Iván Alonso, an economist and columnist, said: “The debate has become bitterly tense, with the country on edge and nobody wanting to calmly weigh solutions.
The politicians, in particular, are rushing to whatever best serves their interests.”
The Andean nation of 34mn, a major copper producer, has been plagued by corruption scandals and rising crime including pervasive extortion rackets, though economic growth since the pandemic has been solid.
The crime wave has compounded voters’ unhappiness, while four recent presidents are behind bars over corruption claims.
Nine days after the presidential vote, with results still trickling in, Piero Corvetto, the head of the National Office of Electoral Processes, announced his resignation on Tuesday.
On Friday his home was raided by police.
Thousands of votes are under review after being flagged for errors and irregularities.
Final results are expected in mid-May.
Electoral authorities were forced to extend voting by a day for about 63,000 people in Lima, the capital, after several polling stations opened late.
Officials blamed the delay on a private contractor failing to deliver ballots on time.
This political chaos had deepened public disillusionment, observers said.
The “normalisation” of scandal and disarray was “especially dangerous”, said Herless Carrion, a journalist and university professor.
“It turns the exceptional into the norm — weak governments, divided congresses, constant accusations, revolving cabinets, discredited leaders, controversial decisions and a more sceptical public.
“The deeper problem is that our politics has lost the ability to build lasting common ground.”
Once counting concludes, Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a former authoritarian right-wing leader, is set to advance to the June run-off with a 17 per cent share of the vote.
Who she will face remains bitterly contested.
With 5 per cent of the vote still to count, only 20,000 votes separate the leftwing former lawmaker Roberto Sánchez in second place and Rafael López-Aliaga, the conservative populist former mayor of Lima, in third.
Whoever wins will have to deal with a divided congress with a slight conservative majority.
Keiko, who leads a major bloc in congress that pushed for the ousting of several presidents, is a towering, if polarising, figure in Peruvian politics.
She unsuccessfully ran for president in 2011, 2016 and 2021, when she narrowly lost to radical leftist Pedro Castillo, who is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence after attempting to close Congress and rule by decree.
Fujimori’s late father, Alberto Fujimori, tamed hyperinflation and oversaw rapid economic growth during his 1990-2000 tenure, while significantly weakening the Shining Path, a leftist insurgency.
But his legacy was tainted by convictions for corruption and human rights abuses, including the creation of death squads.
He died in 2024.
The younger Fujimori has pledged a tough line against crime, the chief concern for many voters in a country where the murder rate has doubled this decade.
She has repeatedly described the left as “the enemy”.
Karina Barnuevo, a law student at the Continental University in Lima and a critic of Fujimori, said that with delays in the vote count raising suspicions of fraud, “the population is alert and ready to take the streets to defend their vote”.
Vying for a spot in the run-off is Sánchez, who served as Castillo’s trade minister and has modelled his image on his jailed former boss, adopting the same traditional headdress that Castillo wore during his campaign — despite hailing from a Lima suburb.
Sánchez has alarmed investors with his party’s pledge to seek a rewrite of Peru’s business-friendly Fujimori-era constitution.
“It’s time for a true re-founding of the nation: a sovereign, fair country built from the grassroots of the Peruvian people,” Sánchez said on the campaign trail.
He has promised to seek Castillo’s release.
Rival candidate López-Aliaga, a wealthy businessman, former Lima mayor and member of the ultra-conservative Catholic Opus Dei movement, is known as “Porky” for his resemblance to Porky Pig.
He has used a live piglet at campaign events and wants to build prisons in the Amazon jungle.
López-Aliaga has proposed a partial rerun of the election, though local media reported that electoral authorities had scuppered the idea.
He has also alleged that “over a million Peruvians couldn’t vote”, and that he gained more votes than Fujimori.
Patrick Huggard-Caine, chief executive of Peruvian fish supplier Pesco, said that while Peru “has perfected the art” of operating alongside political chaos, that status quo was “eventually unsustainable”.
“What affects us most is not the change of government, but the uncertainty and the domino effect this could bring in terms of stalled investment, protests, road blockades, among other things,” Huggard-Caine said.
“From a business owner’s perspective, what’s worrying is that the political limbo could drag on for so long, while payroll, rent and utilities still have to be paid even as the business suffers.”
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