Keiko Fujimori was sworn in as Peru’s president on Tuesday after winning the June presidential runoff by fewer than 50,000 votes, a razor-thin mandate that still handed the conservative leader the keys to a state already battered by constant turnover and elite maneuvering. She became the country’s ninth president in a decade.
Who Holds the Levers
Fujimori’s Popular Force party and its main ally, Popular Renovation, will hold half the senate seats once the new legislature is installed. That makes it harder for opposing legislators to remove her as president, a reminder that the machinery of government is built to protect whoever gets enough seats, not the people forced to live under the results. Over the past decade, only three of Peru’s presidents have been elected by popular vote. The rest came into office after their predecessors resigned or were removed by congress amid protests or corruption scandals.
Fujimori said she hoped to stabilize Peru’s turbulent politics, reduce crime and boost economic growth. That’s the language of order from the top. Her campaign leaned hard on security, promising to improve safety in a country where extortion rackets have become a significant problem. She also promised to develop infrastructure by making it easier for government agencies to form partnerships with private investors, another familiar arrangement where public needs get routed through private profit.
During the campaign, she pledged to fight crime with an “iron fist,” borrowing from policies used by Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele, and said she would build a megaprison modeled after the notorious Cecot penitentiary in El Salvador. The state’s answer to social breakdown, once again, is cages.
What People at the Bottom Are Saying
Opposition leaders have asked Fujimori’s incoming government to reverse a series of laws approved by Peru’s last legislature, which critics say weaken efforts to fight organized crime. The laws eliminate preventive arrests and stop prosecutors from processing political parties involved in corruption under the same statutes as criminal groups. They also make it harder for police to confiscate the goods of criminal groups.
Opposition leaders are also asking the incoming government to create a commission to investigate the deaths of 50 civilians during anti-government protests in late 2022 and early 2023 following the removal of former President Pedro Castillo. During Fujimori’s swearing-in ceremony, some opposition lawmakers protested outside the parliament in Lima, Peru’s capital, holding photos of people killed during the protests. Relatives of the dead said they do not recognize Fujimori as president and that they are protesting her inauguration.
That grief sits right beside the ceremony. Clean suits upstairs, photos of the dead outside.
Fujimori is the daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori, who led Peru in the 1990s and stabilized the economy while defeating terror groups, but was later imprisoned for human rights abuses committed under his rule by the Peruvian military as his government took an authoritarian turn. He was pardoned in December 2023 and died in September the following year. The family name carries the whole ugly archive with it.
Security, Services, and the Same Old State
On Tuesday, Fujimori said she would reorganize social services to fight malnutrition in rural communities and announced a 15% increase in the nation’s minimum wage. She also said the military will “temporarily” lead security operations in crime afflicted areas and that she will focus on preparing Peru for the latest onset of El Niño, a weather pattern that warms ocean temperatures and often leads to flooding along the coast.
“My goal is not only to administer the state,” Fujimori said. “My main objective is to narrow the enormous social deficit that affects millions of Peruvians.”
She also said she would implement reforms to let judges hide their identities as they oversee criminal trials to guarantee their safety. That’s the apparatus speaking in the language of protection while it deepens its own secrecy.
Fujimori was widely backed by voters in Peru’s capital and along the Pacific coast, while voters in the highlands, where there is a larger Indigenous population, overwhelmingly supported left-wing candidate Roberto Sanchez, an ally of Castillo. Sanchez challenged the election results, arguing there were irregularities in how votes were counted at Peruvian consulates abroad, but electoral authorities dismissed his complaints.
Despite the political friction, Peru remains one of the most stable economies in Latin America. Its central bank has long kept the benchmark interest rate below 5%, and the government is known for a conservative approach toward public spending. Critics point to a growing gap in living standards between coastal areas and communities in the Andean highlands.
Fujimori’s June election victory, along with those of Abelardo de la Espriella in Colombia and José Antonio Kast in Chile, underscored South America’s shift toward the conservative wing. Conservatives have won seven major presidential elections in Latin America in the past few years, most of them since the January 2025 inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, in a winning streak propelled by concerns over crime, immigration and slow economic growth.