Eight presidents, one of whom lasted five days. A plethora of attempted impeachments – including four successful ones. Several ex-leaders jailed. Eighteen different finance ministers. A litany of publicly-financed projects that are unfinished. Protests prompting a state of emergency declaration. An absence of trust in government. Election count delays sparking further demonstrations.
All of this has unfolded in the last decade in Peru, with political upheaval reigning over the South American country. And a person widely viewed as fostering that instability looks set to become president.
Conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori looks set to edge past her left-wing opponent, Roberto Sánchez, after an astonishingly close runoff election on June 7. Fujimori, who has run for office four times, leads by 0.2 percentage points with 99% of the votes counted. One district was perfectly tied. Sánchez is demanding a recount, but the writing appears to be on the wall.
Fujimori first ignited the last decade’s chaos after the nasty 2016 election campaign, at the end of which she narrowly lost to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
“She became enraged,” Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told GZERO. “She had the biggest block in Congress at that time, and she decided to play absolute hard-boiled politics and obstruct his government.”
But her impending victory, which hasn’t yet been confirmed, has revived fears in Peru of the authoritarian regime of Fujimori’s father, Alberto. His presidency, which lasted from 1990 through to the turn of the century, was marked by tens of thousands of deaths and disappearances, the use of death squads, and other human rights abuses like forced sterilizations of women. Keiko has partially criticized her father’s regime, but simultaneously denies that some of the worst abuses took place.
Between two Fujimoris. After Alberto was ousted from office in 2000 (he was later arrested and imprisoned), there was some stability in Peruvian politics. From 2001 to 2016, every president served out their full term. Then came Keiko’s defeat, and her efforts to undermine the system.
The younger Fujimori’s success in this endeavor was only possible because she identified gaps in her country’s unique political system. First, it’s relatively easy to remove a president from power because of a nebulous clause that requires the support of two thirds of representatives from one legislature – one that Alberto actually signed when he was president. Second, the country’s parties are also tied to leaders’ personalities, meaning lawmakers spend little time in office, so they take a short-term view on attaining power. Third, Peruvian prosecutors have aggressively investigated corruption against elected officials, according to Freeman.
“There was dirt coming up on everybody, regardless of the actual size or severity of these scandals,” said Freeman. He even suggested that some of them were “laughably small” relative to other countries, including the United States, but that the exposure alone put “ammunition in the hands of Congress” and made the Peruvian public highly distrustful of its lawmakers.
Despite the political problem, the economy has made progress. The country’s economy has weathered the political storm thanks to surging copper and gold prices, two commodities of which Peru holds an abundance. Export volumes of those goods have also jumped, amid a mining investment boom in the country. Goldman Sachs predicted that Peru will have the highest growth rate in Latin America in 2026.
That doesn’t mean it’s right as rain in Peru – far from it. A gas pipeline ruptured in the Megantoni region in March, prompting Peru’s most severe fuel shortage in decades. The Iran war has also pushed up fuel prices, with the government refusing to step in with caps and subsidies as it did in other parts of Latin America. Endemic corruption has meant that nearly half of the country’s publicly-financed projects since 2012 remain incomplete, per a World Bank study, undermining long-term growth. What’s more, violent crime has multiplied: extortions increased fivefold over the last five years, killings doubled, and illegal mining has proliferated.
Can Fujimori fix the problems? It’s hard to tell, in large part because Peru’s likely-inbound leader has been so focused on gaining power that her policy plans are “less elaborate,” according to Freeman. He fears that she will effectively deregulate the shadow mining sector and won’t address issues in higher education. As for the surge in violent crime, Fujimori’s campaign suggested she would take a punitive approach – yet Freeman doesn’t expect her to resort to aggressive tactics used by someone like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and his megaprisons. If there is a silver lining for Fujimori, it’s that the markets like her laissez-faire economic stance – and this will give her a financial boost.
More importantly, there is something upon which she can rely, something her predecessors never had: time in office. Fujimori is unlikely – yes, unlikely – to be removed.
“Her party would have enough votes in Congress to block impeachment efforts,” said Eurasia Group’s regional expert Maria Luisa Puig, “which suggests that she could serve a full five-year term.”
On the one hand, such stability could allow Fujimori to address Peru’s issues with corruption, crime, and high fuel prices. On the other, some Peruvians worry that Fujimori could turn back the clock and recreate some of the authoritarian aspects of her father’s regime. She has enjoyed a great deal of influence over the legislature in recent years, as her party is the largest in Congress, and – now that she looks likely to become president – some fear she could go further.
“What everyone will say, ‘Oh, okay, now Peru’s going to have the same president for four years, great.’ And act as if that’s the main thing that’s been resolved,” said Freeman. “The bigger question for me is, does she persist with this effort to capture what remains of institutional independence and judicial independence?”
Or, after igniting a decade of chaos, will Fujimori try to let Peruvian democracy actually function?
