Buenos Aires, Argentina – President Javier Milei arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday to speak at the Milken Institute’s annual conference, marking his 17th official trip to the United States since taking office.

Michael Milken, famous for his central role and subsequent conviction in one of Wall Street’s biggest financial scandals, invited Milei to return to the conference, having already spoken there in 2024. 

In his speech, the self-proclaimed libertarian president commemorated the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, taking the opportunity to trace similarities between Argentina and the US. 

“The American dream is not dead […] It is being reborn, and it is being reborn in two places at the same time: in the United States, under President Trump […] and in Argentina, where 48 million Argentinians chose to put an end to a century of decline and embrace once more the ideals that also led us to greatness,” Milei said. 

While praising the liberal ideals of the founding fathers, he also warned of “the path of tyranny and socialism,” claiming that “Argentina is a harbinger of the dystopian future that awaits the West if it continues down the path it began to tread some years ago, seduced by the siren song of stability and security versus uncertainty and free-market economy.” 

After listing off his achievements as president, Milei concluded the sales pitch: “The convergence between two sister republics reopens the possibility of a free trade agreement that should have been signed two decades ago […] Once again, I invite you to invest in Argentina, not to replace the American dream, but to make it greater, to expand it across the globe.” 

With Argentina recording negative foreign investment last year for the first time in over two decades, Milei will be desperate for takers. 

Having returned on Thursday, he now faces an increasingly dire political and economic situation. 

A corruption scandal involving his chief of staff, Manuel Adorni, has continued to escalate, with a contractor testifying this week that Adorni had paid him around US$250,000 in cash to do work on one of his properties. This follows complaints first made in March about other expenses that amount to over US$800,000. 

Investigators are now looking into how Adorni can afford spending such figures on his official salary of 7.65 million Argentine pesos, equivalent to about US$5,480. 

Milei’s continued support of Adorni throughout the scandal, coupled with persistent economic woes, has led the president’s disapproval ratings to reach 63.5% in AtlasIntel’s latest polling- the highest figure since he took office in December 2023.

The survey found that over half of Argentines rate corruption as one of the biggest problems facing Argentina, while unemployment and inflation trailed in second and third. 
With monthly inflation on the up and economic activity having shrunk in the year to February, Milei will need to find solutions fast ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

Featured image: President Javier Milei speaking at the Milken Institute’s annual conference on May 6.

Image credit: Argentina’s Presidential Office via YouTube

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Buenos Aires, Argentina – Health authorities across the globe are monitoring passengers repatriated from the cruise ship that left the port of Ushuaia, Argentina, after a deadly hantavirus outbreak drew attention to a rare and more dangerous variant endemic to the Patagonia region of southern Argentina and Chile.

Three passengers died following the MV Hondius’ voyage to Tierra del Fuego province on April 1, including a Dutch couple and a German woman, as investigators attempt to determine where the infection first occurred. 

Two of those deaths were officially confirmed as hantavirus cases, a disease present in many countries around the world (including the United States), which is most commonly spread through inhaling aerosolized particles from rodent urine, feces or saliva. 

However, the Andes variant is the only one with documented human-to-human transmission. As international concern surrounding the outbreak grew, alongside newly confirmed cases, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus sought to reassure the public, stressing that the outbreak “is not the start of a COVID pandemic.”

Argentine health authorities and infectious disease specialists are now focusing on the travelers’ route through areas of Argentina and southern Chile where the strain is endemic.

“The infected person could already transmit the virus to another during the early stage of symptoms, which makes situations like the one aboard the ship so complex,” infectious disease specialist from Universidad de Cordoba in Argentina, Hugo Pizzi, told Argentina Reports.

Pizzi participated in the investigation of a 2018 outbreak in Epuyén, in the southern Chubut province, where Argentine researchers first documented chains of human transmission linked to the Andes strain after more than 30 infections were reported.

Initial international reports citing anonymous sources suggested passengers aboard the cruise may have been infected near a trash dump in Ushuaia, the capital of Tierra del Fuego province. However, according to the Health Ministry’s records, the Andes strain identified in the investigation “only has precedents of circulation in Chubut, Río Negro and Neuquén, and in southern Chile,” not in Tierra del Fuego province.

Health authorities are now reconstructing the movements of the Dutch tourist believed to be the index case. According to a Health Ministry report reviewed by Argentina Reports, the traveler arrived in Argentina in November 2025 and spent nearly four months traveling through Argentina, Chile and Uruguay before boarding the cruise ship in Ushuaia on April 1.

His itinerary included passages through Neuquén province and southern Chile, areas where the Andes variant is endemic. 

On the other hand, investigators from the Malbrán Institute are conducting rodent sampling and disease tracing efforts focused on regions visited before the passengers arrived in Ushuaia.

According to an official report, authorities are also monitoring close contacts who may have interacted with infected passengers during the first days of symptoms, a period researchers consider critical for potential transmission.

Meanwhile, provincial authorities in Río Negro confirmed a separate hantavirus case involving a 45-year-old patient hospitalized in Bariloche. 

Officials told Argentina Reports that the patient remains under intensive monitoring and that close contacts are under preventive isolation. Authorities stressed that, as of the publication of this article, the case has no epidemiological link to the cruise outbreak.

The central question for investigators now is where, along a four-month itinerary through some of South America’s most remote endemic territory, the infection first took hold.

Featured image credit: Argentina’s Health Ministry website.

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In yet another polarized Latin American election, Peru’s June 7 runoff pits two ideological opposites against each other. 

Keiko Fujimori, the conservative daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, and Roberto Sanchez, a left-wing congressman backed by jailed former President Pedro Castillo, won the first round of voting on April 12 with 17% and 12% of the vote, respectively. 

The race comes as Peruvians have become all but fed up with their elected officials. A 2025 OECD study found that trust in government is lower in Peru than in any other Latin American or Caribbean country. With eight presidents in office in just 10 years, political instability has become a hallmark of Peruvian politics. 

Scandals and accusations during this campaign haven’t done much to restore voter confidence.

As the final vote counts in April confirmed he would advance to the runoff, prosecutors charged Sanchez with financial crimes, accusing him and his brother of failing to disclose 280,000 soles ($81,720) in party contributions. His critics are calling for his disqualification. 

“One cannot help but see this as a politically motivated move designed to remove him as a viable candidate,” Jo-Marie Burt, a senior fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) focused on Peru, told Latin America Reports in May. 

In addition, delayed ballot deliveries and quick count releases during the first round prompted the resignation of the head of Peru’s elections agency. 

Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a conservative candidate and Trump acolyte who didn’t make it to the second round, alleged electoral fraud and threatened to call for mass protests. He now faces a criminal complaint for inciting civil disorder. 

Despite political differences, corruption extends beyond party lines 

Despite an Ipsos poll from last year which found that crime, corruption, and political instability were at the top of Peruvians’ concerns, the electorate may be forced to choose between divergent political and economic ideologies that hold similar patterns of corruption. 

“On economic issues, [the candidates] are substantially different. On rule of law, unclear,” Will Freeman, Latin America Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies corruption and organized crime in the region, told Latin America Reports. 

On one hand, Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular party has sat at the center of Peru’s institutional decay for a decade. After winning a congressional majority in 2016, the party fought the anti-corruption investigations that grew out of the region-wide Odebrecht kickback scandal — probes that, Freeman acknowledged, “could fairly be argued to have gone too far at times.” 

“But the response has been the dismantling of the justice system and rule of law in Peru,” he added. The Fujimori name is now “doubly associated” with authoritarianism. 

In the shadow of her father’s dictatorship, marred by corruption and human rights abuses, Keiko is now plagued by “not only what her dad did, but what she herself has done,” he argued. 

Opposition to the Fujimori family, or “anti-Fujimorismo”, has long been a pillar of Peruvian politics, and likely can be credited with snubbing Keiko’s three previous presidential bids. 

However, her strength in the polls suggests that her opposition is weakening. 

Freeman attributes Keiko’s current success less to her own appeal, and more to the collapse of the political coalition opposed to her family. 

Sanchez-ally and leftist President Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021 with anti-Fujimorista backing, would go on to embrace his own form of abuse of power, attempting to dissolve Congress “like Alberto Fujimori himself, almost copying him exactly,” said Freeman. Last year, Castillo was sentenced to over 11 years in prison.

While the elections are often being framed as “left versus right”, corruption and dismantling of institutional power extends beyond party lines in Peru. 

In congress, Castillo’s lawmakers and the Fujimoristas often voted together when it was in their interests, Freeman said. “Particularily in weakening the justice system and shielding themselves from investigation.” 

China and the U.S. in Peru

Governments abroad, especially the U.S. and China, are paying attention to what happens in Peru on Sunday. 

As Trump has set his sights on shoring up U.S. influence in Latin America during his second term, China, who has made significant investment inroads in LatAm countries over decades – most notably in Peru – also has its interests at stake. 

“It’s sometimes not really stressed enough just how important Peru is to China,” Freeman said. 

Beijing controls about half of Lima’s electricity supply and the new deepwater megaport at Chancay, with plans for an interoceanic corridor linking Brazil to the port as an export route for South American commodities. 

Washington, by contrast, has largely written Peru off. Even under former President Joe Biden, Freeman said, there was a “tacit acceptance that the battle was already lost.” 

It’s unclear whether the Trump administration’s more interventionist turn in Latin America will extend to Peru. A Fujimori win, and her ideological alignment with Washington, “may open space for a more direct U.S. military presence,” Freeman suggested, whether against coca production or in the ports, “similar to what Ecuador has done.”

It is unlikely Sánchez would allow the same. His progressivism and close ties to Castillo’s leftist movement could invite Trump’s ire, as has been the case in Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela. 

Freeman also cautions against reading a Fujimori win as Peru joining the U.S.-allied right wing tide across the region. 

“This is more of the culmination of that process than the start of some sudden authoritarian wave,” he said. Peru’s government has been effectively right-wing since Castillo’s removal in 2022, with a conservative Congress setting the agenda.

Featured image: Keiko Fujimori and Roberto Sanchez via their respective X accounts.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina — Thousands of professors, administrative staff, students, and graduates marched across Argentina on Tuesday to demand that the government comply with a university funding law approved last August. 

It was the fourth such “Federal University March”, brought about because of persistent budget cuts to higher education and the sciences since Javier Milei became president in 2023. Since then, government budget allocations to national universities fell 45.6%, the National Inter-University Council (CIN) reported. 

Under current law, the government has adjusted for inflation professors salaries and operating costs, leading to a surge of resignations and other teachers forced to find additional jobs. Although Congress passed the public university funding bill in August 2025, Milei quickly vetoed it, citing his commitment to a zero-deficit policy. 

Read more: Despite large protests, Argentina’s Javier Milei vetoed university spending bill

By September, lawmakers in both chambers rejected the veto, officially enacting the bill into law.

Nevertheless, the president has effectively stalled its implementation via decree, arguing that the law remains on hold until specific funding sources are identified. 

In late March, a federal court ordered the government to comply with a segment of the norm that granted a salary raise for university staff, which was considered the most urgent item in the bill.

In an attempt to dodge its obligations, the government has appealed to the courts and a lower appeals court has just granted the administration’s request to elevate the case to the Supreme Court and suspend the law’s implementation in the meantime. Final word on the matter now lies with the country’s highest tribunal. 

Despite Tuesday’s mass mobilization that gathered over 600,000 people in the capital Buenos Aires and nearly 1 million across Argentina, the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) said that the government decided to double down. 

“You could have a hundred thousand, a million or five million people on the streets, but the budget restriction will continue,” said Alejandro Álvarez, the Undersecretary of University Policies. 

A day before the march, whose slogan called on Milei to “Comply with the law, do not mortgage the future,” the president’s administration cut more projects, including $5.3 billion pesos (US$3.8 million) destined for university building maintenance and $2 billion pesos (US$1.4 million) in science scholarships. Between education, science, technology and direct transfers, the administration has cut over $110 billion pesos (US$79 million). 

Before Milei took office, higher education funding accounted for 0.72% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2023; it’s currently around 0.47% of GDP. 

The impact is stark, and nowadays, some of Argentina’s best public universities are being pushed to the brink, according to their faculties. Universities have complained about deteriorating facilities, rationing electricity, faculty salary cuts and a drop in extracurricular activities, among other things. 

Historic lows and the “brain drain” threat

The current higher education budget is at a two-decade low, plunging funding below levels witnessed during the 1989 hyperinflation crisis (0.44% of GDP) and approaching the absolute minimums recorded during Argentina’s military dictatorship, according to a report by the Ibero-American Center for Research in Science, Technology, and Innovation (CiiCTi).

One of the most pressing medium-term challenges is the retention of academic staff. Faculty salaries have plummeted by 32% since Milei’s La Libertad Avanza administration took office, prompting approximately 10,000 resignations, according to CIN data. 

The exodus has left vacant teaching positions in areas deemed highly strategic for the government’s own economic model, including sectors like energy, technology, and mining.

At the University of Buenos Aires alone, the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences reported the loss of 438 professors and researchers between December 2023 and April 2026.

“We are losing one every two days,” a faculty member who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, told Argentina Reports. The Engineering department saw an additional 342 departures.

A historic setback: Funding drops below 2002 and 1976 levels

The situation is equally critical for science and technology, where analysts warn of a virtual dismantling of the country’s research matrix. 

Federal spending on science and technology fell by 39.3% during the first quarter compared to the same period in 2023, projecting a real-term decline of 47.7% by the end of the three-year cycle, the CiiCTi report noted. 

This sustained budgetary squeeze will reduce the sector’s funding to just 0.149% of GDP, the lowest level recorded since historical recording began in 1972.

To grasp the magnitude of the fiscal adjustment, the current level of funding pierces the floors seen during the worst phase of the 2002 economic collapse (0.177% of GDP) and the onset of the military dictatorship in 1976 (0.194% of GDP). 

These official figures also confirm the government’s failure to meet the targets set by the suspended science funding law, which legally required the state to invest 0.520% of GDP in the sector this year.

An ideological debate over the role of public education

Beyond a 40.3% drop in the purchasing power of salaries and scholarships at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) since November 2023, the funds required to keep research projects active are virtually paralyzed.

The Agencia I+D+i, the country’s main innovation and development agency, has suffered a severe 86.3% cut over the last three years. 

This is compounded by the financial asphyxiation of cutting-edge institutions: the National Space Activities Commission (CONAE)—key to Argentina’s participation in NASA’s Artemis mission—faces a 61.2% cut, while the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNEA) and the National Agricultural Technology Institute (INTA) have seen their budgets slashed by nearly 47%.

Featured image: Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina on May 12 to protest budget cuts to the higher education system.

Image credit: Governor of the Buenos Aires Province Axel Kicillof via X.

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Buenos Aires, Argentina — On the 50th anniversary of Argentina’s military coup, which led to one of the bloodiest dictatorships in South American history, the former prosecutor of Argentina’s so-called “Nuremberg Trial,” Luis Moreno Ocampo, argues that the country offers a key lesson for today’s global conflicts: violence should be confronted with justice, not war — otherwise, “it multiplies.”

In the 1970s, Argentina was battered by extreme political violence, with guerrilla groups and escalating state repression that intensified after the 1976 military coup led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. His military dictatorship carried out an illegal, nationwide campaign that included forced disappearances, torture, and the systematic theft of newborns. An estimated 30,000 people were disappeared, and around 500 babies were taken from detained parents, according to the human rights organization Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo.

In 1985, after the fall of the dictatorship, Moreno Ocampo served as a deputy prosecutor in the Trial of the Juntas, in which Argentina’s newfound democratic government prosecuted the leaders of the military junta for crimes against humanity. 

The landmark trial set a precedent for the development of international criminal justice, later reflected in the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, where Moreno Ocampo went on to serve as chief prosecutor.

In a conversation with Argentina Reports, Moreno Ocampo argues that Argentina’s experience stands as an exceptional case: a country that managed to confront violations to human rights without resorting to the logic of the “enemy” — which implies elimination without guarantees — but instead through a political consensus that led to a new method.

“Argentina showed that it is possible to confront the past with justice, not revenge,” Moreno Ocampo said.

Justice, not war, protects societies from violence

The creation of the ICC, in part, was meant to provide a mechanism in which countries could avoid the political limitations of the United Nations Security Council, upon which permanent members have veto power that often leads to gridlock on pressing conflicts. 

Despite this body existing, many major global powers, including the United States, Russia and China, are not members, and increasingly, the former prosecutor laments, the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction.  

“The ICC is like a global Wi-Fi. Some countries are connected, others are not,” he said. 

In that context —marked by the fragmentation of the international order, large-scale wars such as those in Iran and Ukraine, and growing nuclear risk— war has once again become a tool to resolve conflicts.

From Afghanistan and Iraq to Ukraine, Gaza and now Iran, Moreno Ocampo argues that war is the “mother crime” that enables all others. Faced with violence that has once again become a response to terrorism and disputes between global actors, major powers are repeating a model that does not work.

“The way to protect a country against terrorist groups is not war —which generates more violence— but justice. And that is the lesson from Argentina,” he said.

For Moreno Ocampo, the problem is one of method. There are two ways to confront violence: to treat the violent actor as an enemy and eliminate them, or to investigate and judge them while respecting their rights. In 1985, Argentina chose the second path.

“It gave the military what they had not given their victims: a fair trial,” he said. 

The return of war

Moreno Ocampo traces the return of war as a tool for resolving conflicts to the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, when the United States decided to treat Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not as a criminal to be prosecuted, but as a military target to be eliminated. 

The result, he argues, was counterproductive. Bin Laden remained at large for years, and the war in Afghanistan ultimately failed. 

Similar dynamics, he says, can be seen in Iraq and other conflicts.

“Every time the United States enters these wars, it loses. And yet, for different reasons, it cannot learn from that experience,” he said. 

This logic, he adds, is also visible in current conflicts in the Middle East, where opposing projects seek to eliminate each other rather than coexist.

“When projects appear that aim to exclude or eliminate the other, that inevitably leads to war.”

The persistence of war, according to Moreno Ocampo, is also linked to the limits of the current international system —and is visible in today’s conflicts.

In the Middle East, he argues, opposing sides are trapped in mutually exclusive projects that leave no room for coexistence. “When actors seek to exclude or eliminate the other, that inevitably leads to war,” he said, pointing to the dynamics between Israel and Hamas. 

After the October 7 attacks, he noted, there was broad international consensus in condemning Hamas — but the subsequent military response did not resolve the conflict and instead deepened the humanitarian crisis, while Hamas remains in power. 

For Moreno Ocampo, this reflects a broader failure of method: war continues to be used where justice mechanisms exist but are not applied.

A warning from Argentina

In a world shaped by nuclear weapons, advanced technology and growing geopolitical tensions, Moreno Ocampo warns that continuing down this path could lead to a global catastrophe.

“War is a model that humanity has used for thousands of years. But in a world with atomic bombs and cyberattacks, it is no longer viable,” he said.

Echoing Albert Einstein, he added: “I don’t know how the Third World War will be fought, but the Fourth will be fought with sticks and stones.”

For Moreno Ocampo, Argentina’s experience remains relevant not only as a historical process, but as a possible model for the future.

“The world is returning to the logic of war to resolve conflicts, and that can lead us to a catastrophe.”

Featured image: Luis Moreno Ocampo

Image credit: luismorenoocampo.com

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Roberto Sánchez, a left-wing congressman and former minister, campaigns wearing a hulking straw hat — one that is not his own. 

It once belonged to Pedro Castillo, the jailed former president of Perú, who won the 2021 election against Keiko Fujimori, the conservative daughter of former dictator Alberto Fujimori, whom Sánchez will also face in a runoff election on Sunday. 

The hat, along with Castillo, has become emblematic of the grassroots political movement that Sánchez may carry on should he win the highly polarized elections — even as he attempts to soften some of its more radical aspects. 

Born in Huaral, a coastal province north of Lima, to a barber and a housemaid, Sánchez shined shoes from age seven to 13. He went on to graduate with a psychology degree from San Marcos University and holds a master’s degree in social policy. 

His entire career was built in the public sector including as a congressman, minister of commerce under Castillo, and as president of the Juntos por el Perú (Together for Perú) political party since 2017. 

Castillismo, a political movement named for Castillo, has its roots in rural land reform, anti-elitism, and left-wing populism. Some analysts argue that despite its leader’s incarceration for attempting to dissolve Congress in 2022, the movement endures because of the social and economic realities of the country. 

“The vote for Castillo and Sánchez does have a real underlying basis. I would not describe it as a protest vote, but rather as a vote born out of desperation and abandonment. It is the vote of Perú’s extremely poor,” Hernán Garrido Lecca, an economist and former health minister (2007-2008), told Perú Reports. 

According to Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (INEI), 4.7% of Perú’s population — approximately 1.6 million people — lived in extreme poverty in 2025, unable to afford even a basic food basket. 

Poverty predominantly exists in rural communities in the Andes and the Amazon regions that remain largely disconnected from the economic and political center of the capital Lima. 

“Castillismo does not respond to Castillo as a person, but to what he represents — the protest against Lima’s centralism and the abandonment of the regions,” Catherine Lanseros, a Peruvian journalist, told Perú Reports. 

Unlike Castillo, Sánchez has sought to present himself as a more institutional and pragmatic left-wing candidate. 

He is better educated, more articulate, and a seasoned politician; he made that distinction clear in last week’s debate, attacking Fujimori and her party, Fuerza Popular, for their role in the country’s political instability in recent years. 

In an effort to reassure moderates wary of his leftist policies, in the final days of his campaign, Sánchez presented a 114-page government plan promising macroeconomic stability, respect for the Central Bank’s autonomy, and continuity of free trade agreements. 

Whether this represents genuine moderation or a last-minute political strategy remains, for many Peruvians, a defining question. 

As Lanseros put it: “No matter how many times he rewrites his government proposal, Sánchez cannot deny his essence.” 

Featured image: Roberto Sánchez is running for president of Perú in elections on June 7, 2026.

Image credit: Roberto Sánchez via X.

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It’s been nine days since the runoff election between conservative candidate Keiko Fujimori and leftist Roberto Sánchez and Peruvians are still awaiting a definitive result in what’s become a razor-tight election. 

As of June 15, Fujimori continued to edge ahead with 50.051% of the vote compared to Sánchez’s 49.949% – a difference of about 18,300 votes, reported Reuters. 

About 98.59% of votes had been counted as of Monday. 

In the first three days after the elections, Sánchez held a slight advantage, but when the overseas ballots began arriving in the capital last Wednesday, the results flipped as Fujimori took a slight lead. Overseas ballots have historically favored conservative candidates. 

However, the National Jury of Elections (JNE), Peru’s top electoral tribunal, reiterated last Tuesday that final results are not expected until mid-July.

Peruvians, however, are not unfamiliar with uncertainty in elections. In 2021, it took 43 days to officially declare Pedro Castillo president-elect after Keiko Fujimori filed hundreds of legal challenges alleging fraud. Castillo ultimately won by just 44,000 votes out of more than 17 million cast.

Fujimori, the daughter of former authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori, leads the right-wing Fuerza Popular party and is making her fourth presidential bid after reaching the runoff in each of her previous three campaigns. 

Sánchez, her opponent, is a leftist congressman who built his campaign around tackling inequality and the deep socioeconomic divide between the capital Lima and rural Peru. 

He has been billed as the torch-bearer for the political movement of jailed former President Castillo, with controversial ties to Antauro Humala, a former Peruvian army major and founder of the ethnocacerist movement, known for the “Andahuaylazo” military uprising in 2005. 

Alfredo Torres, director of Ipsos Peru, a polling firm, warned early last week that the overseas vote could shift the result in Fujimori’s favor.

Both candidates have called for calm while awaiting the final count. 

On June 7, election night, Sánchez celebrated with supporters after Ipsos and Datum’s rapid counts showed him narrowly ahead. 

Since then, as Fujimori has taken the lead, his party, Juntos por el Perú, has alleged “electoral fraud” and requested the annulment of 2,400 polling stations where Fujimori has the upper hand due to alleged “identical vote repetition patterns”. 

Ernesto Zunini, the political party’s secretary-general, doubled down yet again and called for composure, saying they will accept the citizens’ vote.

Fujimori told supporters to wait with “patience and serenity.” On Tuesday, she expressed cautious optimism, saying her team’s statistical analysis pointed to “a lot of hope” in the overseas vote and the disputed ballot boxes — the majority of which are from Lima — though she stopped short of claiming victory. 

“It would be very premature to declare a winner. It is my duty to wait,” she said.  

Jorge Valdivia, the spokesperson for JNE, said authorities were still working through the disputed ballot records and other obstacles filed by both parties. According to the National Office of Electoral Processes (ONPE), which administers the official vote count, 1,635 ballot records remain pending review by the Special Electoral Juries (JEE), which began counting on Friday. 

The JNE also confirmed there was no evidence of fraud. ONPE said the remaining votes would continue to be processed as electoral authorities review disputed ballot records and legal challenges.

The European Union’s electoral observation mission echoed that assessment. Mission chief Annalisa Corrado said the EU deployed 150 observers across the country since late February to monitor the vote in line with Peruvian law and international standards. Adding that the mission would continue to observe the final stages of the process and present its definitive report in August. 

The close result was largely in line with pre-election polling. The last Ipsos poll before the election, published on May 31, showed Fujimori with a narrow lead of 38% against Sánchez’s 35% — a three-point gap that fell within the margin of error, making the outcome too close to predict.

Featured image: Peruvians await results of June 7 presidential elections.

Image credit: ONPE via Facebook.

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