Peru Election Crisis: Markets Crash as López Aliaga Alleges Fraud

A fraud claim without evidence, a call for insurgency, a criminal complaint, a market selloff, and a Castillista left-winger ten points behind Fujimori heading into a two-month campaign. This is the Peru investors hoped not to see.

The Peru election crisis that deepened on Wednesday April 15 combines a formal petition from the third-place finisher to annul the results, a criminal complaint against that same candidate for inciting insurgency, and a coordinated selloff in Peruvian assets that defined the session across Latin American markets. The Rio Times, the Latin American financial news outlet, reports that Lima’s former mayor Rafael López Aliaga of the Renovación Popular party has escalated every channel available to him after being overtaken by left-wing Castillista Roberto Sánchez for second place and the corresponding June 7 runoff slot against Keiko Fujimori.

The JNE Petition and the 608,000 Missing Voters

López Aliaga’s recurso to the JNE, dated April 15, does not seek to annul the Fujimori first-place finish; it asks the electoral tribunal to halt the formal proclamation of the second and third-place positions until ONPE provides, within 72 hours, a detailed report on the Lima logistical failures. The core argument is statistical: abstention in Lima Metropolitana rose from 13.35% in the 2016 election to 20.14% in 2026, a 6.79-point jump that translates into roughly 608,000 additional non-voters compared with a normal cycle.

Since Renovación Popular captured 21% of valid votes in Lima, López Aliaga calculates that roughly 120,000 of those missing votes would have gone to him—more than the current gap with Sánchez. Peru’s prosecutor general Tomás Gálvez publicly rejected the fraud framing, telling media that he “has not identified any question of fraud or any cause for nullity” in Sunday’s election. The Colegio de Abogados de Lima urged calm and respect for the official count.

The Criminal Complaint and the Insurgency Call

The political temperature rose on Wednesday when attorney Rubén Serpa filed a criminal complaint against López Aliaga with the Public Ministry after the candidate called supporters to “civil insurgency if the fraud is consummated” and asked the JNE to declare the elections null. Serpa’s own political background in a banned extremist organization complicated the optics of the complaint, but the escalation itself was undeniable—Peruvian opinion leaders, bar associations, and even business federations began drawing public lines.

Keiko Fujimori moved to distance her campaign. The Fuerza Popular leader publicly rejected the “insurgency” framing and called for “democratic order” while asking that any fraud claims be substantiated through proper channels. In parallel, fifth-place finisher Alfonso López Chau of Ahora Nación refused to back Fujimori and signaled openness to supporting Sánchez—an early indication that left-bloc consolidation around the Castillista candidate is already beginning.

Why the Market Crashed

Peruvian assets tend to be unusually stable during presidential crises because Peru remains one of the few Latin American economies with investment-grade credit ratings and because the Banco Central de Reserva under Julián Velárde has delivered two decades of orthodox monetary policy. Wednesday broke that pattern. “The sol will likely remain under pressure until there is greater clarity on Sánchez’s backing heading into the second round,” Barclays strategist Erick Martínez Magaña told Bloomberg.

The reason for the selloff is the specific Sánchez platform: the Castillista candidate has promised to free jailed ex-president Pedro Castillo, rewrite Peru’s constitution, review the economic-constitutional regime to recover sovereignty over natural resources, and critically for markets has publicly stated he would not reappoint Velárde. A Peruvian academic captured the comparison succinctly: “When Castillo took office he immediately ratified Velárde, but Sánchez has already said he won’t work with him, and that will cost the market a great deal of volatility.” BBVA FX Strategy noted Fujimori “probably has difficulties against whoever she faces in the second round.”

What Comes Next

The JNE is in permanent session and must now rule on López Aliaga’s petition while simultaneously pursuing its own criminal complaint against ONPE chief Piero Corvetto for the Lima logistical chaos, and Peru’s powerful business federation Comex has already demanded Corvetto’s removal before the June 7 runoff. The most likely path is that the formal proclamation proceeds on schedule, the Sánchez-Fujimori runoff is confirmed, and the market continues to price Peruvian risk premium at levels the country has not seen since the 2021 Castillo-Fujimori runoff—even though Fujimori remains the odds-on favorite given Sánchez’s ten-point first-round deficit and his declared Castillista alignment. As an economy growing at 3.68% enters the two-month runoff campaign, the next sixty days will determine whether institutional Peru holds the line or whether 2021 repeats itself with a different Castillista and a different inflection point.

Related Coverage: Peru Election 2026: Sánchez Surges to Runoff • Peru GDP Beats at 3.68% • IMF WEO: Peru 2.8% Growth 2026