Peruvians choosing a president from 35-candidate pool in Sunday's election

LIMA, Peru (AP) — A former minister, a comedian and a political heiress are among 35 candidates for Peru's ninth president in just 10 years.

The election Sunday takes place during a surge in violent crime and corruption, fueling widespread discontent among voters, who largely view candidates as dishonest and unprepared for the presidency. Many of the contenders have responded to people’s crime concerns with wide-ranging proposals, including building megaprisons, restricting food for prisoners and reinstating the death penalty for serious crimes.

“You can’t trust anyone anymore, nothing’s going to change,” construction worker Juan Gómez, 53, said as he carried two heavy bags with potatoes and rice to feed his five children. “(Criminals) come on motorcycles, put a gun to your head… you look around and there’s no police officer. What are you going to do? You just let them rob you.”

Here’s what to know about Sunday’s election.

Voting is mandatory for Peruvians from the ages of 18 to 70. More than 27 million people are registered, and of those, about 1.2 million are expected to cast ballots from abroad, mainly in the United States and Argentina.

A candidate needs more than 50% of votes to win outright. However, a runoff in June is virtually assured given the deeply divided electorate and the pool of candidates, the largest in the Andean country’s history.

A major preoccupation is surging crime, which has led to frequent protests. Homicides have doubled and cases of extortion have increased fivefold this decade, according to official data.

“You get on the bus, and you have to sit far from the driver; you don’t know if you’ll make it home alive,” retiree Raúl Zevallos, 63, said. “Criminals drive by on motorcycles, shoot, kill the driver, and you could die, too.”

More than 200 public transportation drivers were killed in Peru in 2025. The same year, a national survey carried out by the state’s National Institute of Statistics and Informatics found that 84% of respondents in urban areas feared becoming victims of a crime in the following 12 months.

Thirty-five people are on the ballot, including Keiko Fujimori, a conservative former congresswoman and daughter of the late President Alberto Fujimori. This marks her fourth attempt to become president.

Keiko Fujimori has promised to crack down on crime with an iron fist, but she has also defended laws that experts say make it difficult to prosecute criminals. The laws, which her party backed in recent years, eliminated preliminary detention in certain cases and raised the threshold for seizing criminal assets.

If elected, she has said judges presiding over criminal cases will be anonymous and prisoners will have to work to earn their food.

Also running is Rafael López Aliaga, the conservative former mayor of Peru’s capital, Lima. He has proposed building prisons in the country’s Amazon region, allowing judges to conceal their identities and expelling foreigners who are living illegally in Peru.

Meanwhile, comedian-turned-politician Carlos Álvarez has tried to garner support by promising to convene the leaders of El Salvador, Denmark and Singapore to tap their expertise in security.

Peruvians will also choose a bicameral Congress for the first time in more than 30 years, following recent reforms of the legislature that will concentrate a great deal of power in the new upper chamber. The president won't be able to dissolve the new Senate, though the chamber will be able to remove a president from power.

Under the new bicameral structure, impeaching the president will be easier, with the Senate only needing 40 of the 60 senators to approve it. Previously, 87 of 130 lawmakers in the unicameral chamber had to vote in favor of removal, and they frequently exercised that power, contributing to the country's revolving door of presidents in the last decade.

The bicameral system is returning even though 80% of voters rejected it in a 2018 referendum. Lawmakers amended the Constitution in 2024 to make it possible.

Alejandro Boyco, a researcher at the Institute of Peruvian Studies, said the Senate will appoint and sanction high-ranking officials, including the country’s Ombudsman, Constitutional Court members and some Central Bank directors. Senators will also review and amend bills from the lower chamber.

“They’ve concentrated too much power in a 60-people chamber,” Boyco said. “They are not going to be immune to being corrupt.”

Garcia Cano reported from Caracas, Venezuela.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Supporters of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, of the Popular Force party, cheer outside of a debate ahead of the April 12 election in Lima, Peru, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

FILE - A supporter of Popular Renewal presidential candidate Rafael López Aliaga, who has embraced the name nickname “Porky”, leans a against a wall alongside his “Porky” costume, in Lima, Peru, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

Presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, of the Popular Force party, waves to supporters during a campaign rally in the San Juan de Lurigancho neighborhood of Lima, Peru, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Presidential candidate Rafael López Aliaga, of the Popular Renewal party, greets supporters upon arriving at a campaign rally in the Manchay neighborhood in Lima, Peru, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Pardo)

Supporters of presidential candidate Rafael López Aliaga, of the Popular Renewal party, dance as they arrive at a campaign rally in the Manchay neighborhood of Lima, Peru, Saturday, April 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Mejia)

Semiofficial news agencies in Iran published a chart Thursday suggesting the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard put sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz during the war, a likely pressure tactic as Iran, Israel and the United States are now in an uneasy, two-week ceasefire ahead of possible negotiations in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, in unusually strong language, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “unequivocally” condemned Israeli strikes in Lebanon that killed and injured hundreds Wednesday after the ceasefire was announced, according to a statement by his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric.

Israel has said the ceasefire agreement does not extend to its war in Lebanon with the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, although Iran and mediator Pakistan said it does. Sirens sounded in northern Israel early Thursday as Hezbollah claimed it was attacking with rocket fire.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again Wednesday in response to Israeli attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Here is the latest:

Iran’s negotiating team for talks with the United States will arrive Thursday night in Islamabad, the Iranian ambassador there said.

Reza Amiri Moghadam made the comment on X, without identifying who was on the Iranian team.

He wrote that the “Iranian delegation arrives tonight in Islamabad for serious talks based on 10 points proposed by Iran.”

Those points include Iran enriching uranium, maintaining its control of the Strait of Hormuz and other issues that have been nonstarters in the past for U.S. President Donald Trump.

The White House has repeatedly described the 10 points issued by Iran as false.

Moghadam wrote that the Iranians would come to Islamabad despite “skepticism of Iranian public opinion due to repeated ceasefire violations by Israeli regime to sabotage the diplomatic initiative.”

That refers to Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, which Israel and the U.S. have said wasn’t included in the shaky ceasefire.

Oil rose again to above $97 a barrel and Asian stocks were trading lower Thursday on skepticism over a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran.

Brent crude was up 2.9% to $97.46 per barrel. It previously fell briefly to below $92 following the temporary ceasefire announcement.

Benchmark U.S. crude was 3.7% higher Thursday at $97.94 per barrel.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 0.8% to 55,855.57, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.7% to 5,773.03.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.2% to 25,831.21. The Shanghai Composite index was down 0.8% to 3,961.31.

Ship-tracking data from trade data and analytics platform Kpler showed only four vessels with their Automatic Identification System trackers on passed through the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, the first day of the ceasefire.

However, this total does not include so-called “dark fleet” vessels — those with their AIS trackers turned off.

Many of those “dark fleet” ships carry sanctioned Iranian crude oil out to the open market.

U.S. President Donald Trump issued an online statement Thursday insisting that his surge of warships and troops will remain around Iran “until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.”

Trump’s comments on his Truth Social platform appear to be a way to pressure Iran as uncertainty hangs over the tentative two-week ceasefire now holding in the war.

“If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the ‘Shootin’ Starts,’ bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before,” Trump wrote.

He also insisted Iran would not be able to build nuclear weapons and “the Strait of Hormuz WILL BE OPEN & SAFE.” That comes as vessels are not moving through that waterway, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all oil and natural gas traded once passed.

A New York-based think tank is warning that the tentative ceasefire in the Iran war “hovers on the verge of collapse.”

The Soufan Center said the Israeli strikes on Lebanon on Wednesday risked the deal falling apart.

“Even if Lebanon was formally outside the deal, the scale of Israel’s strikes was likely to be viewed as escalatory, nonetheless,” it wrote in an analysis published Thursday.

“Israel’s strikes can be understood both as an effort to drive a wedge between Iran and its proxies and as a response to being allegedly sidelined in the original ceasefire discussions.”

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound reopened with dawn prayer Thursday after being closed for the duration of the Iran war, according to Jerusalem’s Islamic Waqf, the Jordanian religious authority that administers the compound.

Jerusalem’s police said Wednesday that it would lift restrictions on all holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City starting Thursday morning. It added that hundreds of officers and volunteers would be active in the city.

Access had been prohibited altogether, or restricted to a few dozen faithful, at Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites during the now-paused conflict, when missile attacks from Iran often sent Jerusalem residents into shelters.

The restrictions subdued Lent, Passover and Ramadan celebrations for many in some of the holiest sites for adherents of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

But they’re lifted just in time for Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Easter (Pascha) on Sunday, a week after Catholic and Protestant observances.

FILE - Two police officers walk in front of an anti-U.S. billboard depicting American aircraft being caught by Iranian armed forces in a fishing net beneath the words in Farsi, "The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, The entire Persian Gulf is our hunting ground," in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, April 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Ali, 4, holds a toy horse next to the tent his family uses as a shelter after fleeing Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Smoke rises following several Israeli airstrikes in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

Firefighters, first responders, and volunteers work on smoldering debris at the site of an Israeli airstrike that struck an apartment building in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)