Some 27 million Peruvians are called to elect the executive authority who will be sworn in on July 28. As has been happening for decades, they will do it with their backs bent, with an attachment to the institutional ritual but discouraged. They will opt, once again, for the “lesser evil”if there is still room for that idea that has been repeated so much. Keiko Fujimori assumes that place for the fourth time. This Sunday he faces Roberto Sanchez. They have reached this stage after a very long vote count. Otherwise, the situation is similar to that of the 2021 elections, when the daughter of the former autocrat faced rural teacher Pedro Castillo. As well as she invokes the father’s legacy who spent the last few years in jail and under house arrest for his responsibility in human rights violations, Sánchez critically vindicates Castillo, who a year and a half after taking office was dismissed by a Congress where Fujimoriism is a determining power.
Fujimori and Sánchez moved to this electoral stage after having won in the first round 17% and 13% of the votes, respectively. These numbers reflect the fragmentation and detachment of a society that has to lean towards one of these alternatives. Previous surveys by Ipsos, Datum and CPI show a slight advantage in favor of the leader of Fuerza Popular, who, in addition, rides the wave of strong regional right-wing that has just had its sample in Colombia with Abelardo de la Espriella. However, the margin of error of the polls places the contenders very close to a technical tie. As the measurements have had error as a constant, on Sunday night some surprise may occur, among other reasons due to the possible incidence of those who initially leaned towards the blank vote, the annulment of the ballot or because they finally decided to vote: in total they represent more than 20% of the electoral roll.
The background of this contest is invariable: rejection of politics in general and a latent fear of the continuity of a crisis which in recent years has devoured presidents as if it were a computer game: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski had to resign to avoid being dismissed by Congress, something that did happen with his successors Martin Vizcarra and the ephemeral Manuel Merino. Castillo governed little, and in the midst of successive crises. When he tried to close the legislature, he suffered the same fate as his predecessors. Dina Boluarte and José Jeri, interim leaders, tried the same medicine. The current provisional president, José María Balcázaris the eighth in this saga of mistakes. The other side of the Peruvian political coin has to do with those heads of state who completed their term but over the years went to prison: Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala and Castillo. Alan Garcia he avoided that fate by committing suicide before being arrested by police.
De facto parliamentarism
The popular esteem of Congress is null, 1%, and yet it has been the real power for almost a decade, which has led several analysts to speak of a de facto parliamentary government that makes and breaks amidst citizen apathy. Except for what happened with Castillo, who caused a revolt in the south of the country, with 50 dead, the other presidents entered and left the scene without demonstrations taking place for or against. The Peruvian Parliament has acted according to its own logic and something similar is expected to happen starting in July, unless Fujimori wins at the polls. His party has largely hatched this plot and has greater tools to use in favor of the autocrat’s executor.
Keiko, as her followers call her, has managed to gather behind her the varied conservative spectrum that was left by the way, with the former mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliagaat the head. The exnumerary of Opus Dei, a man of vast fortune, joined the chorus that urges Peruvians to stop the arrival at the Pizarro Palace of a non-existent “communism.” “A triumvirate of terror that seeks to come to power to put into practice its sinister plans, whose only possible corollary is the destruction of democracy and the Peruvian economy,” the newspaper said in an editorial. Peru 21. The publication also summoned the ghost of the Shining Path terrorist group, defeated by Fujimori Sr. in the early 1990s. The mainstream media has not failed to point out the alleged programmatic inconsistencies of the Together for Peru candidate and his dangerous leftist inclinations. Not even Sánchez’s commitment not to undertake radical economic changes has dissipated the aversion. The influential political analyst César Hildebrandt formulated the opposite exhortation. “Mr. Sánchez will not be able to play with fire because he will be the first to get burned: he has limits imposed by democracy. Mrs. Fujimori has said that she wants to govern like her father, and we all know that her father had no limits. The tainted vote is my personal option, my hygienic idea, but the best option in that second round is “Prevent Fujimorism from having full powers and fulfilling its dark designs on us.”.
The inequalities
The wave of urban violence has not been stopped in the previous days, which forced the Executive to extend the state of emergency in several jurisdictions in the south of the country. The growth of crime is one of the features that defines life in Peruvian cities. The other, inequality. The OECD contemplates an increase in GDP of almost three points for this year. Between 2000 and 2013, the annual growth rate was six points. From 2014 to the present, that rate has been reduced by half. The key to model Peruvian lies in the fact that business and the creation of wealth do not suffer from institutional disasters. Poverty currently affects nearly nine million people. The electoral campaign coincided with the debate on an improvement of the minimum wage, 285 euroswhich receives almost 30% of the population in a country with very high levels of labor informality. Sánchez was branded a “populist” for demanding the need for an improvement in income.
Just as in the second round the country was practically divided in halves, there are other disturbing divisions in Peru. Only in 2025, The number of girls and adolescents under 19 years of age who became mothers amounted to 37,676. Within this group, 993 were under 14 years of age. Teenage pregnancy is a consequence of the high incidence of sexual violence, the absence of effective comprehensive sexual education (CSE) and barriers to access to sexual and reproductive health services. These young women and men of their same generation are part of the electorate that will define the race. Maite Vizcarra, columnist for the Lima newspaper The Commerce In the eve he recalled his enormous disinterest in politics. They know what they know about Fujimori and Sánchez through TikTok, “with their memes, their songs, their reels of 20 seconds and its chacotera energy”.
Subscribe to continue reading
