Lawyers in Peru on Wednesday filed a criminal complaint against conservative presidential candidate Rafael López Aliaga, accusing him of “interfering” with the nation’s elections and demanding his immediate arrest.
López Aliaga, who served as mayor of the capital city of Lima, is one of the 35 candidates who appeared on the ballot in Sunday’s presidential elections, representing the conservative Popular Renewal (RP) party. Sunday’s election was marred by logistical delays and a slow vote-counting process that, at press time Thursday morning, has not concluded.
Given the large number of candidates, all polling firms projected that no candidate would be able to reach the 50-percent majority of the votes to become elected as the next president of Peru in the first round, with a prospective June runoff between the two most-voted candidates mathematically assured.
While official preliminary results published by the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE) suggest that conservative former first lady and former Senator Keiko Fujimori of the Popular Force party will head to the runoff as the frontrunner candidate, the race for the second place remains largely uncertain. The tally at press time shows a razor-thin vote margin between López Aliaga and lawmaker Roberto Sánchez Palomino of the leftist Together for Peru party.
ONPE’s first round of results published on Monday indicated that López Aliaga was in second place, but his lead whittled down in the following days as more votes were counted, dropping to third place after Sánchez Palomino overtook him in the race.
At press time, and with 92.962 percent of the votes counted as of 9:14 a.m. Eastern, there is a 9,309 vote — or 0.068 percent — difference between Sánchez Palomino and López Aliaga. The leftist lawmaker having 1,879,206 (11.987 percent) against the conservative former mayor’s 1,869,897 votes (11.919 percent). Keiko Fujimori remains in the lead with 17.065 percent of votes cast.
The Peruvian newspaper La República reported on Wednesday night that Peruvian lawyers Indira Rodríguez and Doller Huamán filed a complaint against López Aliaga, demanding his immediate arrest on charges of “disruption of the electoral process,” accusing him of using “his massive following to call for a civil uprising after questioning the election results.”
As evidence, the lawyers reportedly presented videos of a peaceful protest López Aliaga staged outside the building of the National Elections Board (JNE) on Tuesday night in which he delivered a speech demanding the annulment of Sunday’s elections and called on his followers to stage an “insurgency.” Rodríguez and Huamán reportedly argued that such conduct “is not protected by freedom of speech, as it may undermine the right to vote and the country’s stability.”
Per the Peruvian legal outlet LP, the two lawyers called for López Aliaga’s detention based on what the country’s Criminal Code defines as “arrest in flagrante delicto” after he gave the Peruvian electoral authorities a 24-hour deadline to “declare this rubbish null and void.”
López Aliaga justified his calls to annul the election on grounds that the logistical issues experienced throughout the process, some of which caused delays in some voting stations and caused 15 stations in Lima to instead open their doors on Monday, left “over a million voters unable to vote.”
At press time, López Aliaga has not presented any evidence to substantiate his accusations. On Wednesday, he offered ONPE workers a 20,000 Peruvian soles reward (roughly $5,800) if they bring forward “accurate and verifiable information regarding possible irregularities, fraud, or sabotage” of the election.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, former first lady Keiko Fujimori, daughter of late President Alberto Fujimori, said that representatives of her Popular Force party are at the disposal of López Aliaga and Sánchez Palomino’s respective parties to “help clarify the facts and ensure that the truth prevails” amid the ongoing uncertainty over the election’s results.
Fujimori also questioned López Aliaga about his claims and calls to “insurgency,” urging him to address his concerns through the appropriate channels.
“The results are going to be very close; it will come down to every single vote. I’m not going to respond to López Aliaga’s insults, which, sadly, we’ve come to expect from him. But what we absolutely cannot allow is for an insurgency to be called for,” Fujimori said.
“In a democracy and under the rule of law, those who lead political parties have a duty — above any personal interest — to preserve order and channel their grievances through established procedures and rules. Any other path leads to chaos, and we cannot accept that,” she continued.
Despite the logistical delays experienced throughout Sunday’s election, the Organization of American States (OAS) released a preliminary report describing the election as peaceful, offering a series of recommendations to avoid logistical inconveniences for the upcoming June runoff election.
Sunday marked the first time Peru has held elections since 2021 and comes after a period of high political instability that saw Peru go through nine different presidents over the past ten years — three of whom were impeached and removed from office between December 2022 and February 2026.
Presently, Marxist, pro-child marriage lawmaker José María Balcázar is serving as interim president, until July 28, when he will be succeeded by the winner of the yet-to-be defined June presidential runoff election.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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