LimaPeru’s former president, Alberto Fujimori, is elderly and facing legal difficulties, but his daughter announced on Sunday that he will run in the country’s 2026 elections.
“My father and I talked and we decided that he would be a presidential candidate,” said Keiko Fujimori, leader of South America’s main right-wing party.
The 85-year-old Fujimori ruled Peru with an iron fist as president from 1990 to 2000 and led a military campaign that nearly defeated the Maoist guerrilla group known as the Shining Path.
To some, he is remembered as a man who promoted economic growth through neoliberal policies while crushing rebel movements.
Some remember him for his ruthless, authoritarian style of governance.
He was jailed in 2009 for the massacres that saw military death squads kill 25 people, including one child, in 1991 and 1992 in purported anti-terrorism operations as part of his “Shining Path” movement.
Fujimori was released last year on humanitarian grounds, but it is unclear whether he will be able to run for election as a result of his conviction.
“The pardon was granted for humanitarian reasons, but it does not absolve him of his criminal responsibility or the substance of his sentence,” Ernesto Blume, a former judge at Peru’s Constitutional Court, told broadcaster Canal N.
In 2018, the elderly Fujimori revealed that doctors had found a tumor in his lung.
It was revealed that last month he had fallen at home, broken his hip and been admitted to intensive care.
Keiko Fujimori, leader of the right-wing National Forces party, said her father, who recently revealed he has a tongue tumor, is strong enough to run for president again.
“When I speak about politics, I feel his will to live and I believe he will recover,” she told Peruvian daily El Comercio.
