Keiko Fujimori declared winner of Peru presidential race

LIMA, July 3 - After weeks of reviewing contested ballots, protests and accusations of fraud in a razor-thin race, conservative Keiko Fujimori was officially declared the winner of Peru's presidential race by the country's electoral office on Friday.

Fujimori won 50.135% of the vote in the June 7 runoff to clinch the nation's top office in her fourth run for the presidency, just ahead of leftist Senator Roberto Sanchez's 49.865%, a difference of just about 50,000 votes out of 18 million.

The slim margin is a reversal from the narrow loss Fujimori suffered in 2021, when she lost by about 45,000 votes to former leftist President Pedro Castillo. Castillo was impeached and jailed for trying to dissolve Congress in 2022.

Sanchez was seen as Castillo's political heir and has said he will not recognize Fujimori's government after claiming, without providing evidence, electoral fraud. Sanchez, boosted by voters from Peru's rural regions, led the race earlier in the count and also won votes cast within the country by a slim margin. He has led marches contesting the vote and filed a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights challenging the elections.

Fujimori on the other hand was boosted by voters in the capital region of Lima and also led votes cast by overseas ballot by a wide margin, pushing her to victory.

The tight, drawn-out race has highlighted the country's deep polarization and political turmoil that has resulted in the ousting of several presidents over the last decade.

FUJIMORI VICTORY DRAWS PRAISE FROM RIGHT-WING LEADERS

When Fujimori assumes power on July 28, she will be the 10th president to take office since the start of 2016. She will succeed interim president Jose Balcazar, who took over in February after a series of presidential dismissals over accusations of corruption or abuse of power.

Fujimori's win reaffirms Latin America's rightward shift, and other conservative leaders in the region including Argentina's Javier Milei, Chile's Jose Antonio Kast and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele have already congratulated the president-elect.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also congratulated Fujimori in a statement Tuesday, saying that President Donald Trump's administration looks forward to deepening cooperation on security, investment, and trade.

Her victory was also welcomed by markets, which had been rattled by the prospect of a Sanchez win. On Thursday, Moody's issued a report saying a Fujimori government will preserve policy continuity, bolster investor confidence and help the country sustain growth.

The report added that this could help unlock delayed mining projects in Peru, which is the world's third-largest copper producer.

A DIVISIVE DYNASTY

Fujimori, 51, is the daughter of late President Alberto Fujimori, who ruled the country with an iron fist from 1990 to 2000 and was credited with defeating Maoist insurgents and taming the country's runaway hyperinflation.

But the Fujimoris are still a controversial dynasty in Peru. Alberto served 16 years in prison for human rights abuses and Keiko spent years under investigation over campaign financing allegations, which were dropped last year. She was held in pretrial detention twice, between 2018 and 2020, spending nearly a year and a half in jail.

Fujimori will now be tasked with uniting a polarized nation with a fragmented Congress prone to ejecting presidents. The country also faces a vast economic divide between the capital of Lima and rural areas, where heavy protests and clashes with security forces left over 60 dead after Castillo was removed from office.

Those areas were also Sanchez's bastion of support and his party, Together for Peru, holds the second-largest bloc in Congress with Fujimori's party with the most seats. REUTERS