Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who was pardoned last December for corruption and responsibility for the murder of 25 people, will run for president for a fourth time in 2026, his daughter Keiko Fujimori, leader of the Fuerza Popular party, said on Sunday.
“My father and I have talked and decided together that he will be the presidential candidate,” Keiko Fujimori said on social media.
Despite the announcement, current law in the country establishes that anyone who has been found guilty of acts of corruption, as is the case of Fujimori, cannot run for president or vice president of the country.
Fujimori, who was convicted in 2009 for the murder of 25 Peruvians during his administration in 1992, has three other convictions for corruption and owes around $15 million to the Treasury, according to the Attorney General’s Office specializing in corruption crimes. The former president was extradited from Chile in 2007 and sent to a prison for presidents in Lima, where he remained imprisoned until December 2023.
Alberto Fujimori, 85, joined the right-wing Fuerza Popular party in June, posting a video of the event in which he is seen with his eldest daughter. The post included the caption: “The founding leader of Fujimorism takes his place in Fuerza Popular.”
Keiko Fujimori, 49, has run unsuccessfully for president three times and on July 1 began a trial against her for alleged money laundering for which prosecutors have requested a sentence of 30 years behind bars.
Alberto Fujimori, who governed from 1990 to 2000, has begun rebuilding his image on social media since leaving prison, after the government of President Dina Boluarte freed him in December 2023 to serve a 2017 presidential pardon revived by the Constitutional Court.
Last February, Willax television asked him if Boluarte was justified in calling for new elections, echoing the three months of protests that left 50 dead between 2022 and 2023. “There is no justification, the government of President Dina Boluarte will continue until 2026. At least Fuerza Popular and Fujimorism have agreed on this,” said the former president.
Boluarte and Keiko Fujimori have remained silent on the issue.
Fujimori revealed in May that he had been diagnosed with a “new tumor” in his tongue, considered “malignant.” In a video on his social media, he said that “now that I have regained my freedom, it is time for me to fight a new battle.” In July, he underwent hip surgery after a fall, a procedure that involved “the placement of a complete prosthesis on the left side,” according to his daughter Keiko.
Fujimori’s primary care physician, Fujimorist legislator Alejandro Aguinaga, commented after Fujimori joined his daughter’s political party that the former president’s priority “is his health…but his right to run for office or be in politics cannot be blocked.”
Alberto Fujimori first ran for president in 1990, at the age of 52. After winning the election, he enacted a new constitution in 1993 that allowed him to run for a second term, which he won in 1995.
Amid huge controversy, he ran for president for a third time in 2000 and emerged victorious amid allegations of fraud. His rule was short-lived, and in September of that year a video circulated apparently showing his adviser, Vladimir Montesinos, bribing an opposition lawmaker, sparking a wave of protests.
Following the scandal, Fujimori left the country in November of that year and took refuge in Japan, from where he resigned. In 2005, he traveled to Chile where he was arrested and extradited to Peru two years later.
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