This Sunday, Peruvians face a new opportunity to try to stop the political crisis that has dragged the country for a decade, in which eight presidents have passed through power, including the current one. They will do so in general elections considered historic, both due to the increase of up to 8% in the census compared to 2021 and due to the presence of 35 aspirants to the head of State, an unprecedented figure that anticipates an extreme fragmentation of the vote.
In a ballot of colossal dimensions —42 centimeters wide by 44 high— none of the candidates exceeds 15% support in the polls and only five appear with real options to reach the second round, scheduled for June 7, according to the surveys, which also collect 17% of undecided voters.
Ultraconservative options are once again at the top of preferences. Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) leads the polls, with 14.5% of voting intention. The daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori is running for the fourth time, after having reached the runoff in 2016 and 2021, elections she lost by a narrow margin and in which she portrayed herself as a victim of alleged fraud.
In second place appears Carlos Álvarez (Country for All), with 10% of the support. He is a popular television comedian turned politician, who embodies the already usual profile of a supposed 'outsider' willing to capitalize on citizen weariness based on whims and a discourse of punitive populism. In his case, he has promised to establish the death penalty and life imprisonment for murderers and extortionists.
Álvarez, who at the close of the campaign was seen imitating —with an at least questionable sense of humor— the also candidate César Acuña, has climbed in the polls until overtaking by a few tenths the former mayor of Lima Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular), representative of the traditional right, who has likewise focused his message on a hard line against crime.
His detractors reproach him, among other aspects, for having used his television programs in the 90s to campaign in favor of Alberto Fujimori and ridicule his opponents. After a decade at the head of the country, the father of the current candidate was condemned for crimes against humanity.
Behind them is a second bloc of aspirants who, despite having a lower voting intention, maintain options of sneaking into the second round. Among them are the main left-wing candidacies, such as that of Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú), with 4.9% support and a proposal that includes expanding rights, strengthening public services, and the pardon of former president Pedro Castillo.
The former rector of the National University of Engineering and former director of the Central Bank of Peru, Alfonso López Chau (Ahora Nación), and former minister Jorge Nieto (Partido del Buen Gobierno) represent progressive center options. In parallel, the communicator Ricardo Belmont (Cívico Obras) has stood out in campaign for openly misogynistic and homophobic manifestations.
The rest of the candidates, many practically unknown to the citizenry, barely exceed, in the best of cases, 4% of the support. This strong atomization of the vote is largely explained by the role of the current Congress, which in 2023 decided to suppress the open, simultaneous and mandatory primaries (PASO), a mechanism that imposed minimum thresholds to be able to run in the general elections.
Renewal of Congress and return of the Senate
Besides choosing the next president, the electorate will completely renew the parliamentary representation. More than 10,000 aspirants compete for a bicameral Congress that had not existed since the 1990s and for which a minimum of 5% of the votes is required to obtain representation. To the 130 seats of the Chamber of Deputies and the five of the Andean Parliament are now added 60 seats in the new Senate.
The latest polls indicate that the Chamber of Deputies would be in the hands of five main forces. Fuerza Popular, Fujimori's party, would be the first bloc with up to 39 seats. Renovación Popular would obtain 30, Juntos por el Perú 29, Ahora Nación 23 and Partido del Buen Gobierno 9, thus completing the legislative arc.
In the Senate, Fuerza Popular also emerges as a dominant force, with 21 representatives, in a chamber that is anticipated to be even more influential and interventionist than the Chamber of Deputies. They would be followed by Juntos por el Perú and Ahora Nación with 14 senators each, three more than Renovación Popular, López Aliaga's party.
Beyond the struggle between parties, the quality of candidacies is once again at the center of the debate. Among the more than thirty presidential aspirants, there are around fifteen who have omitted information in their sworn statement of curriculum vitae. But the focus is placed above all on almost 500 candidates for Congress with firm sentences for different crimes, including 51 linked to cases of family violence, either for aggressions or for failing to comply with the payment of child support.
The lists also include candidates with convictions for robbery, complaints for drunk driving, assaults, injuries, or death threats. The right-wing party Alliance for Progress (APP), whose presidential candidate is César Acuña, is the party with the most convicted members: 53, compared to, for example, Fuerza Popular's 32.
In recent years, Congress has proclaimed and dismissed presidents at will, fueling a chronic instability that has made it difficult to respond to one of the worst security crises of recent decades and has triggered citizen rejection towards institutions.
Never had Peruvians had before them such a wide range of candidates. It remains to be seen if, with an electorate concerned above all by insecurity, corruption and unemployment, this appointment at the polls will serve to begin to contain the deep institutional and political confidence crisis that the country is going through.