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Electoral authority solidifies right-wing Fujimori’s narrow victory over leftist Roberto Sanchez.
Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has been declared the winner of Peru’s presidential race by the country’s electoral authority.
The announcement on Friday comes weeks after the June 7 run-off election against leftist rival Roberto Sanchez.
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Fujimori had a slight lead after the vote count ended earlier this week, with the official tally released on Friday showing a razor-thin victory. She took 9,223,000 to Sanchez’s 9,173,000.
“A new stage begins,” Fujimori wrote on X on Friday.
“We assume it with responsibility, humility, and a deep sense of duty. Each day of this transition process is an opportunity to listen, engage in dialogue, and arrive prepared at the start of the new government.”
Fujimori is the daughter of the late former President Alberto Fujimori, who had been jailed for human rights abuses.
After running on a platform of cracking down on crime, she has vowed to “unite the country”, which has dealt with years of political turmoil and a stagnating economy.
Fujimori and Sanchez reached the runoff vote after defeating 33 other candidates in April.
Issues at polling stations and lengthy delays in counting had dogged the April election, casting a pall over the vote in June.
Sanchez, who had strong support among rural and Indigenous voters, has alleged irregularities and fraud in the vote, but has not provided any evidence.
Election monitors have cautioned no such proof of the claim has yet to emerge.
Still, reporting from Lima Peru, Al Jazeera’s Mariana Sanchez said that Sanchez may seek to rally support to have Fujimori swiftly impeached by the the country’s unicameral Congress.
Such impeachments have been common in Peru, where the constitution permits broad grounds for removing a president when approved by two-thirds of the chamber.
Fujimori is set to become Peru’s ninth president in 10 years when she takes office in late July.
“He won the most amount of votes in Peru, but the votes from abroad took the balance in favour of Fujimori,” Al Jazeera’s Sanchez said.
“So, he has taken his case to the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and he has said that he will open a resistance front here, a political and social resistance front,” she said.
“But really, the stability in this country depends on the Senate, because the Senate will have the power to impeach the government with 40 votes and the Senate is divided in two,” she said.
“So, we will see if the Senate decides to keep Fujimori for five years or they will impeach her and continue the decade-long political instability in the country,” she said.
The 51-year-old Fujimori had run for president in the country’s last three elections, but had repeatedly come up short.
Still, her tough-on-crime message appeared to connect as Peru has faced a surge in organised crime in recent years, which has seen an uptick in extortion, kidnappings and contract killings.
The administration of US President Donald Trump, which has supported several right-wing candidates across Latin America amid an increasingly militarised approach to the region, had back Fujimori.
She has been embraced by other right-wing leaders in Latin America, including Argentina’s Javier Milei.
