Voters to choose from 35 presidential candidates, including a comedian, a media baron and a political dynasty heiress.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 12 Apr 2026<\/span>12 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Polls have opened in Peru\u2019s presidential and legislative elections, with no clear frontrunner amid years of political instability.<\/p>\n Since 2018, Peru has seen eight presidents, with a high turnover rate marred by impeachments and corruption scandals, leading to voter disillusionment with weak governments.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n Some 27 million Peruvians are eligible to vote on Sunday to pick the country\u2019s ninth leader in a decade, with polling stations across the country opening at 7am (12:00 GMT) and closing at 5pm (22:00 GMT), with preliminary results expected shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n With 35 candidates on the presidential ballot, Peruvians will choose from a wide range of potential leaders, including a comedian, a media baron, a political dynasty heiress, and a hard\u2011line ex\u2011mayor who likens himself to a cartoon pig.<\/p>\n However, all major candidates continue to poll well below the 50 percent needed to win the election, making a June 7 run-off appear likely.<\/p>\n A fruit seller in Lima told the Reuters news agency that she was still undecided on who to vote for.<\/p>\n \u201cPeru is a mess, and there\u2019s no candidate worth voting for,\u201d Gloria Padilla said.<\/p>\n Clothing merchant Maria Fernandez, 56, also shared the same sentiment.<\/p>\n \u201cI wouldn\u2019t vote for anyone. I\u2019m so disappointed with everyone in power,\u201d Fernandez told the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been governed by nothing but corrupt, thieving scoundrels,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n The most well-known candidate is conservative Keiko Fujimori, who will make her fourth presidential bid after reaching the run-off in all three previous races.<\/p>\n While Fujimori has taken a position of guarantor of order and economic stability, her candidacy remains polarising due to her family legacy. Her father, former President Alberto Fujimori, was convicted of human rights abuses and corruption before he died in 2024.<\/p>\n On the eve of the election, Fujimori told the AFP news agency that she would \u201crestore order\u201d in her first 100 days if she were to win, sending the army into jails, deporting illegal migrants and strengthening security at the border.<\/p>\n At the other end of the political spectrum, Ricardo Belmont \u2013 a former mayor of the capital, Lima, running for the centre-left Civic Party Obras \u2013 was polling in second place.<\/p>\n Popular comedian Carlos Alvarez follows behind Belmont in pre-election polls and has campaigned on a platform of being tough on crime, as Peru\u2019s homicide rate has more than doubled in the past decade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Voters to choose from 35 presidential candidates, including a comedian, a media baron and a political dynasty heiress. Published On 12 Apr 202612 Apr 2026 Polls have opened in Peru\u2019s presidential and legislative elections, with no clear frontrunner amid years of political instability. Since 2018, Peru has seen eight presidents, with a high turnover rate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/IMG_2010-1.jpg?resize=96%2C96&quality=80)
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