Alberto Fujimori to Stand in 2026 Peru Elections

AFP-Jiji

16:40 JST, July 15, 2024

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori — aging and legally embattled — will stand in the South American country’s 2026 elections, his daughter announced Sunday.

“My father and I have talked and decided together that he will be the presidential candidate,” Keiko Fujimori, leader of the South American country’s main right-wing party, said.

President from 1990 to 2000, the elder Fujimori, 85, ruled Peru with an iron fist, leading a military campaign that largely defeated the Shining Path, a Maoist guerrilla group.

To some, he is remembered for bolstering economic growth through his neo-liberal policies while crushing the rebels.

Others recall his ruthless, authoritarian governing style.

He was sent to prison in 2009 over massacres committed by army death squads in 1991 and 1992 in which 25 people, including a child, were killed in supposed anti-terrorist operations in his Shining Path campaign.

Fujimori was released last year for humanitarian reasons, though it is unclear if he is eligible to stand for election because of the conviction.

He was pardoned “for humanitarian reasons, but it has not eliminated his criminal responsibility or the very nature of the sentence,” Ernesto Blume, a former judge on Peru’s Constitutional Court, told broadcaster Canal N.

In 2018, an aging Fujimori revealed that doctors detected a tumor in his lungs.

Last month, it was disclosed that he was in intensive care after breaking his hip in a fall at home.

Keiko Fujimori, who leads the right-wing Popular Force party, recently said her father — who also disclosed he was suffering from a tongue tumor — was strong enough to embark on another presidential run.

“When we talk about politics, I see his will to live and I trust he will recover,” she told Peruvian daily El Comercio.