Andean Group - August 2026

Keiko Fujimori finally reached the end of her 15-year slog towards the Peruvian presidency on 28 July, when she was sworn into office. Her narrow defeats in three previous elections, in 2011, 2016, and 2021, were widely attributed to the polarising legacy of her late father, authoritarian former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000). This time around, enough voters were prepared to look past the human rights abuses and corruption that have long been associated with the Fujimori name in the public consciousness. The main reason for this is mounting concern about violent crime, which Keiko has promised to stamp out with tough new measures.

The divisive reputation of the Fujimori family was on display again in this election, which only tilted in Fujimori’s favour thanks to the overseas vote. Fujimori, of the right-wing Fuerza Popular (FP), defeated the left-wing Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú, JPP) by less than 50,000 votes, out of 18.4m that were cast for the two candidates. Whilst she won the overall election by 50.135%-49.865%, this was only due to Fujimori’s strong advantage among voters living outside of Peru. Sánchez won the domestic vote by a razor-thin margin of 50.135%-49.865%, resulting in a month-long campaign to have the overseas votes discarded due to unproven allegations of fraud. Sánchez eventually conceded defeat on 6 July.

For years, Fujimori’s surname has been an electoral millstone, reminding voters of systematic human rights abuses that characterised her father’s successful counterinsurgency campaign against the Sendero Luminoso (SL) guerrilla group. Keiko’s rivals in the past four run-off elections have highlighted how her father’s presidency was tarnished by the formation of military death squads, a forced sterilisation campaign targeting mostly indigenous women, corruption, and democratic erosion that included an ‘autogolpe’ (self-coup) in 1992. Alberto was sentenced in 2009 to 25 years in prison for human rights abuses and corruption and spent most of his remaining years in prison before being released on health grounds in December 2023, 10 months before his death.

Alberto’s death was perhaps a factor in Keiko being able to draw a line under the darker aspects of his presidency, while leaning into his blend of hardline ‘mano dura’ security policies and pro-market populism. Defending that legacy, Keiko argued in a 12 April presidential debate that “in the last 25 years, no government has led with the same strength,” lamenting that “chaos returned and now it governs us”. At the same time, there is mounting public appetite for a tougher security approach amid a visible deterioration in law and order. Indeed, a hardline stance against crime united practically all of the 35 candidates who contested the election’s first round [SSR-26-02].

Fujimori’s campaign manifesto, which is pointedly titled ‘Peru with order’, opens with an elegy to her father’s government, saying that, faced with “the advance of terrorism that threatened the integrity of the nation, inflation that exceeded 7,000%, and over half of the population in poverty”, Alberto “took extraordinary measures to regain territorial control, re-establish order, and defeat terrorism”. It states that “Peru can do it again: overcoming insecurity and economic stagnation with discipline, promoting investment and ensuring the essential conditions for the wellbeing and development of all citizens”.

Regarding insecurity, which the manifesto describes as “the country’s main problem”, Fujimori has said her government will focus on three key areas: crime prevention, combatting organised crime, and improving the justice system. She has set a goal of reducing homicides by 20% by the end of her term in 2031, by boosting police patrols, boosting youth employment and sports schemes, tackling gang recruitment in schools, and regaining State control over public spaces. The manifesto also highlights the need for technological advances to boost crime prevention, including increasing the use of drones by the security forces, and establishing “interconnected video surveillance and command centres at the national level, with real-time crime mapping and artificial intelligence for predictive analysis and emergency coordination, as well as patrols and cameras aimed at reducing insecurity and recovering spaces taken over by crime”.

The manifesto sets out plans to build four maximum-security mega prisons, four regular prisons with capacity to hold 1,000 inmates, and one youth prison, which would be placed under the temporary command of the armed forces. Existing prisons would be expanded, with inmates segregated according to the crimes they have committed. Mobile phone reception would be blocked at all prisons to tackle crimes committed from the inside, such as extortion. Low-risk inmates would be put to work on public projects, with financial incentives aimed at reducing recidivism.

The judicial system is also set to be targeted with reforms. The manifesto highlights the need for changes in the court and prison systems, the police, and the attorney general’s office, among others, to “guarantee judicial independence, [improve] the speed of processes, the predictability of decisions, the effective fight against impunity and corruption, and to recover citizen confidence in the rule of law”. Fujimori has set a target of reducing impunity rates from 90% to 50% by the end of her term (these figures are based on the percentage of crimes that result in a sentence within six months, according to her manifesto).

The crime causing most public concern is extortion. The issue surged to the top of the political agenda in late 2024, when transport unions staged nationwide strikes to demand action against violence meted out by extortionists. The failure to get a grip on extortion was a key factor in the impeachment of former president Dina Boluarte (2022-2025) a year later [SSR-25-11], and the issue is likely to be near the top of Fujimori’s agenda. Although she takes office with a stronger position in congress than her recent predecessors, she will need the support of the centrist Partido del Buen Gobierno (PBG) and the far-right Renovación Popular (RP), both of which could fade if protesters again take to the streets in large numbers.

• Congress

  On 22 June the national electoral council (JNE) confirmed the seat distributions for the new congress. In the 60-seat senate, which is returning after 34 years under a unicameral system, Fujimori’s FP has 22 seats, followed by Sánchez’s JPP on 14, the far-right Renovación Popular (RP) on eight, the centrist Partido del Buen Gobierno (PBG) on seven, the centre-left Partido Cívico Obras (PCO) on five, and the centre-left Ahora Nación (AN) on four. In the 130-member lower chamber, FP has 41 seats, followed by JPP on 32, PBG on 18, RP on 15, PCO on 14, and AN on 10.

US relations

Fujimori’s election victory was welcomed by President Donald Trump’s administration in the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 30 June that the US “looks forward to deepening collaboration with the Fujimori administration to advance security cooperation and to strengthen bilateral cooperation on investment and trade”. One of Fujimori’s early actions is likely to be signing Peru up to the US-led Shield of the Americas security alliance, which also includes the mostly conservative governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad & Tobago. In an interview with Colombian news magazine Semana on 12 July, Fujimori said that she was “very interested” in joining the Shield of the Americas, which she said offers “many opportunities to recover peace and fight against organised crime”.

Asked whether she would permit US air strikes within Peru, of the sort that have been carried out in Ecuador and Venezuela in recent months, Fujimori told Semana that “we will permit [US] support as far as the constitution and the law allow”. She did, however, suggest a preference for non-military support, saying that in the 1990s the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has been shuttered under Trump, supported crop substitution programmes that reduced coca cultivation from 125,000 hectares (ha) to 20,000 ha.

Murders and extortion increase

According to a report published on 22 January by the national statistics institute (Inei), preliminary figures showed that the homicide rate in 2025 was 10.7 per 100,000 people, up from 10.1 in 2024, 9.3 in 2023, and 8.6 in 2022. The report stated that there were 3,675 murders in 2025, up from 3,426 in 2024. The homicide rate was highest in the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios (24.6), followed by the port city of Callao (23.6) and the capital Lima (23.1). The same report stated that reports of extortion increased by 18.9% in 2025, totalling 26,585. This was up from 16,346 in 2022, when complaints of extortion began rising dramatically. Meanwhile, reports of kidnappings fell by 5.8% in 2025, to total 1,587, while reports of robberies fell by 44.2% to total 62,844.