This Sunday at 7:00 hours (14:00 hours in peninsular Spain) the voting day for the general elections in Peru has officially begun, in which more than 27 million citizens are called to the polls with the aim of leaving behind a decade of political and institutional instability in the Andean country.
In this electoral appointment, the ultraconservative candidates are once again among the main options of the electorate. At the forefront of preferences is Keiko Fujimori (Popular Force), who is around 14.5% of the votes. The daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori is running for the fourth time, after having gone to the second round in 2016 and 2021, elections in which she was defeated by a narrow margin and in which she presented herself as a victim of fraud.
The second best-placed candidate, with around 10% support, is Carlos Álvarez (Country for All), a popular television comedian who has made the leap into politics. His figure fits the profile of the already habitual supposed 'outsider' who tries to channel citizen discontent through showy proposals and a discourse of punitive populism, in his case with promises such as the death penalty and life imprisonment for murderers and extortionists.
Álvarez has been gaining ground in the polls until overtaking by a few tenths the former mayor of Lima, Rafael López Aliaga (Popular Renewal), representative of the traditional right who, like the comedian, has focused a good part of his campaign on offering a firm hand against crime.
In these elections, not only the president and the two vice presidents of the Republic are elected, but also 60 senators, 130 deputies, and five representatives to the Andean Parliament, thus configuring the country's new institutional map.
To guarantee the normal development of the voting scheduled for this Sunday, a large security operation has been deployed with the mobilization of more than 100,000 military personnel and agents of the National Police of Peru throughout the national territory.