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LIMA, Peru (AP) — Conservative leader Keiko Fujimori was sworn in as Peru’s president Tuesday after winning the June presidential election by a margin of fewer than 50,000 votes.
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Fujimori, the daughter of a former president jailed for human rights abuses, has become Peru’s ninth president in a decade. The 51-year-old is hoping to stabilize its turbulent politics, while reducing crime and boosting economic growth.
Over the past decade, only three of Peru’s presidents have been elected by popular vote. The rest have come into office after their predecessors resigned or were removed by congress amid corruption scandals.
Fujimori’s Popular Force party and its main ally, Popular Renovation, will hold half the senate seats as a new legislature is installed, which will make it harder for legislators to remove the new president.
Fujimori centered her campaign around promises to improve security in Peru, where extortion rackets have become a significant problem. She has also promised to develop infrastructure by making it easier for government agencies to form partnerships with private investors.
Fujimori also said during her campaign that she will fight crime with an “iron fist,” implementing some policies adopted by Salvadorean President Nayib Bukele. She said she would build a megaprison modeled after the notorious Cecot penitentiary in El Salvador, and will enable judges to hide their identities as they oversee criminal trials in an effort to guarantee their safety.
Opposition leaders have asked Fujimori’s incoming government to reverse a series of laws approved by Peru’s last legislature which critics say weaken efforts to fight organized crime.
The laws eliminate preventive arrests and stop prosecutors from processing political parties involved in corruption under the same statutes as criminal groups. The laws also make it harder for police to confiscate the goods of criminal groups.
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Opposition leaders are also asking the incoming government to create a commission to investigate the deaths of 50 civilians during anti-government protests in late 2022 and early 2023 following the removal of former President Pedro Castillo.
Relatives of the dead have said they do not recognize Fujimori as president and that they are protesting her inauguration.
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Fujimori will lead a deeply polarized country. She was widely backed by voters in Peru’s capital and along the Pacific coast. Voters in Peru’s highlands, where there is a larger Indigenous population, overwhelmingly supported left-wing candidate Roberto Sanchez, an ally of Castillo.
Sanchez challenged the election results, arguing there were irregularities in how votes were counted at Peruvian consulates abroad, but electoral authorities dismissed his complaints.
Despite the political friction, Peru continues to be one of the most stable economies in Latin America. Its central bank has long kept the benchmark interest rate below 5%, and the government is known for a conservative approach toward public spending.
But critics point out a growing gap in living standards between coastal areas and communities in the Andean highlands.
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