After three attempts, Keiko Fujimori breaks political curse to lead a divided Peru

Set to be sworn in as Peru’s first female president, 51-year-old conservative Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi will take office under the weight of history and a deeply divided nation.

Her inauguration marks the end of a dramatic political saga. On July 4, after nearly a month of painstaking vote counting and tense legal challenges, Fujimori was formally declared president-elect, edging out candidate Roberto Sanchez by a razor-thin margin of 50.1% to 49.8% to claim the presidency on her fourth attempt.

While Sanchez drew massive support across the impoverished southern Andes, Fujimori propelled her victory by dominating the vote in the densely populated capital of Lima and securing a wide margin among Peruvians living abroad.

The official declaration marked the culmination of one of the most polarized elections in the South American country’s history. For decades, the phenomenon known as antifujimorismo, a persistent bloc of voters who would align with almost any rival to keep her out of power, seemed an insurmountable wall. But on her fourth attempt following losses in 2011, 2016 and 2021, Fujimori finally chipped away at that resistance, capitalizing on a nation exhausted by rampant crime and institutional paralysis.

-Born in a polarizing dynasty

Fujimori’s political trajectory was forged in the midst of a crisis. In 1994, at just 19 years old, she was thrust into the public eye as First Lady of Peru following the bitter separation of her parents, Susana Higuchi and then-President Alberto Fujimori. That early exposure tied her permanently to her father’s authoritarian legacy, a polarizing history marked by economic stabilization on one hand and severe corruption and human rights violations on the other, for which the patriarch served 25 years in prison.

The weight of that legacy frequently tore through her personal life. During her father’s imprisonment, Keiko famously broke with her younger brother, Kenji, when he sought a political deal with then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to secure a pardon, directly defying Keiko’s strategy to force Kuczynski from office.

Educationally and politically, however, she carved her own path. Born in Lima on May 25, 1975, Fujimori earned a degree in business administration from Boston University and an MBA from Columbia University. Entering Congress in 2006, she made history by garnering 602,869 individual votes, the highest tally recorded for a legislator up to that point.

In 2009, she founded Fuerza Popular, converting her father’s movement into a disciplined party. But controversy trailed her closely: she spent 13 months in pre-trial detention amid allegations of illicit campaign financing linked to Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, charges she has steadfastly denied.