Peru's presidential runoff pits Keiko Fujimori against Roberto Sánchez as judge orders trial for leftist candidate

Peru's eighth presidential election in a decade reaches its climax on Sunday, 7 June, with a runoff between right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist Roberto Sánchez Palomino. The vote pits the daughter of the late autocrat Alberto Fujimori against a former minister who casts himself as the heir to deposed president Pedro Castillo.

The candidates

Fujimori, 51, leads the Fuerza Popular party she founded in 2010. She topped the first round with roughly 17% of the vote and is making her fourth consecutive bid for the presidency. She lost the 2011 runoff to Ollanta Humala, the 2016 runoff to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski by a margin of just 50.12% to 49.88%, and the 2021 runoff to Pedro Castillo with 50.13% against her 49.87%. Her party wields considerable influence in both chambers of Congress, and critics accuse her of governing without holding the presidency by shaping legislation and removing presidents through impeachment.

Sánchez, 57, is a psychologist by training and the son of a barber and a laundress from rural Peru. He served as foreign trade and tourism minister under Castillo and was the only minister to remain in the cabinet from the start of that administration until Castillo's attempt to dissolve Congress, which Sánchez refused to support. He now runs under the Juntos por el Perú banner and placed second in the first round with about 12% of the vote. On the campaign trail he has worn the same straw hat that distinguished Castillo and has promised to pardon the imprisoned former president.

Trial order against Sánchez

On Friday, Judge Adolfo Farfán ruled there were "sufficient grounds" for Sánchez to stand trial over alleged false statements about party financing. Prosecutors say Sánchez received more than $57,000 in contributions from party members between 2018 and 2020 without declaring them to the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE). The prosecution had requested a prison sentence of five years and four months.

Sánchez has one week to appeal, and his defense team has already announced it will do so. If he wins the presidency, he would enjoy immunity under the Peruvian constitution. The case was first brought before a court in January 2026, but the tribunal partially rejected it and ordered prosecutors to reformulate their filing. Sánchez has called the accusations "a lie" and says opponents have spent years trying to discredit him politically.

A tight race

An IPSOS voting simulation that circulated on social media after the polling blackout showed a technical tie, with Sánchez at 43.8% and Fujimori at 43.2%. Until two weeks ago, Fujimori had led polls by six percentage points, but the presidential debate last Sunday appears to have shifted momentum. Sánchez used the debate to attack Fujimori over what he calls a "mafia pact" run by her congressional bloc, blaming her for the removal of multiple presidents and for laws he describes as pro-crime.

A decade of instability

Peru has cycled through eight presidents since 2016. Four heads of state were removed by Congress, where Fujimori's Fuerza Popular holds enormous sway. Two resigned before being ousted, one completed a brief eight-month term, and the current interim president, José María Balcázar, is due to hand over power in July. Public trust in parliament sits at just 3%.

The Fujimori legacy

Alberto Fujimori governed Peru from 1990 to 2000, stabilizing the economy while running an ultra-repressive regime in its fight against the Shining Path communist insurgency. His government carried out kidnappings, executions, and forced sterilizations of indigenous communities, dissolved parliament, censored the press, and silenced the opposition. He fled to Japan in late 2000 and resigned via fax. In 2009 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity. He died in 2024. Keiko Fujimori entered public life at age 19 when her father removed her mother, Susana Higuchi, as First Lady and assigned the role to his eldest daughter. Higuchi later denounced being confined and tortured in the dungeons of the National Intelligence Service (SIN), allegations Keiko has always denied.

Here was born and taught the most important leader of the last 50 years of Peru. But the owners of Peru, the oligarchy, the owners of the media, of big mining, of agro-exports, and of big business with the State did not like it: they hated this beautiful hat, they hated the colour of our president, they hated his way of speaking.

For years they have tried to install a lie to discredit me politically.