The newly inaugurated president – the ninth in just a decade – pledged to deploy the armed forces to crime-ridden areas and adopt a hardline security strategy as Peru grapples with its worst wave of gang violence, extortion and illegal mining in decades.
Peru’s conservative President Keiko Fujimori took office on Tuesday, vowing to tackle the wave of crime sweeping the Andean nation.
On her fourth presidential bid, Fujimori won June’s runoff by fewer than 50,000 votes.
Addressing Congress, the newly inaugurated leader announced plans to deploy the military to areas where crime, drug trafficking and illegal mining are rife.
“During states of emergency, the armed forces will temporarily take the lead in security operations” until they can “return these territories to the citizens,” she said.
A group of leftist lawmakers left the room in protest at Fujimori’s inauguration, which marks Peru’s ninth presidency in a decade.
Latin American leaders including Argentina’s Javier Milei, Chile’s Jose Antonio Kast, Bolivia’s Rodrigo Paz, Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa and Uruguay’s Yamandu Orsi attended the ceremony.
The 51-year-old ran a campaign shadowed by the divisive legacy of her father, who ruled Peru in the 1990s.
Alberto Fujimori was jailed for corruption and crimes against humanity committed during what he considered a fight against terrorism.
His daughter’s hardline messaging taps into Peru’s worst security crisis in decades, fueled by the spread of both local and foreign criminal gangs that oversee contract killings and extortion.
She has proposed fighting crime by expelling undocumented people, setting up courts with anonymous judges and making prisoners work for their food.