Peru’s right-wingers Rafael López Aliaga and Keiko Fujimori lead the race for the presidency, but they are far from its obvious winners.
Ignacio Portes & Jorge C. Carrasco
ELECTIONS
Why Peru’s right-wingers are holding a shaky lead
Peruvians head to the polls in nine days to elect their new president — a position that has become somewhat of an ejector seat, with the country’s trigger-happy Congress quick to jettison leaders who lose its support. Peru has had a total of nine presidents in the past decade; the last caretaker, José Jeri, lasted just four months before lawmakers deemed him morally unfit for office.
Some expect the April 12 vote to confirm a trend that The Brazilian Report has long tracked: a rightward shift in Latin American public opinion. Peru fits the pattern, amid a crime wave that has dominated the campaign, terrain that typically favors conservatives. Indeed, two well-known right-wingers are ahead in the polls:
- Keiko Fujimori, daughter of president-turned-dictator Alberto Fujimori, and
- Rafael López Aliaga, a former mayor of Lima, the Peruvian capital.
👉 Why it matters. Yet despite their lead, Fujimori and López Aliaga’s voting intention totals are far from impressive, miles from the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Furthermore, their appeal beyond their base is severely limited, hobbling their presidential bids and making victory anything but certain.
Fujimori has qualified for the last three presidential runoffs (2011, 2016 and 2021), but lost each time. Keiko’s father, Alberto Fujimori, was responsible for a dictatorship marked by human rights abuses and the persecution of opponents. And time and again, the majority of voters in Peru have seemed willing to elect anyone but return to the Fujimori name.
A ruling last month illustrates those fears well: on March 5, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights held that the Peruvian state was responsible for the forced sterilization and subsequent death of Celia Ramos Durand in 1997, part of a Fujimori government “family-planning” program. Her case was not a one-off, as many of the 300,000 women and 20,000 men rendered infertile during the program did not grant their informed consent for the procedure, which was often carried out unilaterally after they gave birth.
These horrific stories are well-known in Peru’s south, home to the majority of the country’s indigenous groups, who were disproportionately targeted by the program. In this area, support for Fujimori stands at around 4%, despite her family’s historic appeal among rural voters, which now holds up only in the more mestizo north.
Fujimori’s main right-wing competitor, Rafael López Aliaga, does even worse among rural voters. His campaign thrives in and around Lima — where he polls at 17.4% — but only 30% of Peruvians live in this area, and his backing plummets to just 4.8% in rural regions.
López Aliaga has tried to cultivate the public persona of a competent, successful businessman, and has captured the support of the capital’s upper-middle class, but he is perceived as privileged and distant outside these circles. His extravagant ultraconservative style, which includes a daily self-flagellation ritual practiced by some Opus Dei members, also likely goes beyond what the average social conservative sees as normal.
Prediction markets still make both candidates the favorites, giving López Aliaga a 33% chance of winning and Fujimori 20%. A runoff between them is not out of the question, but many other nominees are close enough to overtake, and the huge numbers of undecided voters (nearing one-third according to some estimates) could break late for an outsider.
Indeed, that is what happened in 2021, when rural voters moved in the last few days of the race towards little-known left-wing teacher Pedro Castillo, who ended up beating the polarizing Fujimori in a tight second round. So stay tuned for the second part of our preview next week, where we’ll look at those running from behind who can still sneak into a competitive runoff despite their single-digit support figures.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
In a scandalous departure following leaks that showed his right-hand man bribing politicians, judges and media owners, Alberto Fujimori announced his sudden resignation. But how did he do it?
- Through a VHS tape
- Midway through a radio interview
- Via fax
- With a handwritten letter mailed to the media
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