Peru's Ninth President in a Decade: Fujimori Returns to Power

Nine presidents in ten years. Say it slowly and the number stops sounding like politics and starts sounding like churn — governments arriving and collapsing faster than most Peruvians can learn the names, let alone judge the results ¹¹. On Tuesday, July 28, 2026, Keiko Fujimori walked into that churn and put her name on it, sworn in at a solemn session of Congress in Lima to begin the 2026-2031 term ⁷. She is the ninth occupant of the palace in a decade ¹¹, and the first woman elected to lead the country by popular vote ⁵⁸¹¹.

The choreography was formal, even calm. She took office just past midday ⁹, then walked to the presidential palace after the inauguration ³. Inside Congress, senators, deputies, heads of state and government, and other guests looked on ⁷. Outgoing foreign minister Carlos Pareja Rios appeared at transfer-of-power ceremonies ⁸. The swearing-in of her new cabinet took place at the Government Palace the same day ¹⁰. For a country used to abrupt endings, the day itself followed the script.

What makes this handover different is the surname. The inauguration marks the return of Fujimorism to power almost 30 years after her father Alberto Fujimori resigned via fax from Japan as his government crumbled ⁵. UPI framed the moment in dynastic terms, describing Keiko Fujimori as returning the family dynasty to power after 30 years ⁸. She is 51 years old and described as a conservative ⁹; Latin America Reports calls her “hard-right” ¹¹. That label matters in Lima, where Fujimorism still divides memory between order and authoritarian excess, and where every new president inherits both the palace and the suspicion that comes with it.

Victory did not come quickly. It came after 15 years of failed attempts and four presidential campaigns ⁸, ending in a tight June election and narrow runoff victory ³¹⁰. She defeated little-known left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez by fewer than 50,000 votes ¹¹. The research file gives that margin but not fuller verified totals, and the excerpts do not provide a complete certified count beyond the “fewer than 50,000 votes” gap ¹¹. Over the past decade, only three of Peru’s presidents were elected by popular vote ¹⁰, a reminder that ballots have been the exception rather than the rule in the country’s recent succession of leaders.

From the podium, her language was broad and conciliatory in the state-newsagency account, though the available excerpts are truncated. After being sworn in, she told Congress she will work to ensure the well-being of Peruvians, especially “those who have remained on the margins of economic growth” ⁴. El País distilled her headline promise as a “safe, prosperous, and united” country ⁵. The oath itself, as transcribed in the available excerpt, begins “I, Keiko…” before the text cuts off ⁷, leaving no verified full inaugural text in the sources provided.

The concrete pledges reported by EFE were about security and paychecks. In her inaugural address she announced plans to grant the military greater authority to lead operations against organized crime, reform the prison system, and raise the minimum wage by 15%, from 1,130 to 1,300 soles (about $382) ⁶. It is a telling combination: force against crime paired with cash for households feeling left behind. The cabinet sworn in later that day at the Government Palace will own the delivery ¹⁰, and the wage figure gives Peruvians an early, checkable test of whether inauguration words become payroll reality.

Outside Peru, the moment was read as part of a region moving right. Reuters frames the inauguration as extending Latin America’s rightward tilt ². Bloomberg notes she has “taken on one of Latin America’s most perilous political jobs” ⁹, a phrase that captures both the prize and the trap. Perilous is not rhetorical when the job has changed hands nine times in ten years ¹¹ and when only three of those recent presidents reached office through a popular vote ¹⁰. A narrow mandate of fewer than 50,000 votes over Sánchez ¹¹ leaves little cushion for the inevitable clash between promises of safety and the institutional weakness that undid her predecessors.

There is also what the file does not prove. Two dramatic narration claims could not be verified against the provided sources: that more than 50 protesters were killed after the ouster of Pedro Castillo, and that four predecessors sit together in the same Lima prison. None of the ten sources mentions Castillo, his ouster, or protest deaths, while the prison claim rests only on a truncated AP headline alluding to presidents ending up “in the same prison” without naming names, numbers, or facility in the excerpt ³. The responsible reading is restraint: Peru’s instability is well documented in the turnover count ¹¹ and the elected-versus-appointed record ¹⁰, without reaching for tolls or jail rosters the sources do not supply.