Right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori has been declared the winner of Peru’s presidential race by the country’s electoral court, the National Jury of Elections (JNE).

Friday’s announcement comes weeks after the June 7 run-offtion against her left-wing rival, Congress member Roberto Sanchez.

Fujimori had a slight lead after the vote count ended earlier this week, and the official tally released on Friday shows a razor-thin victory. She took 9,223,000 votes to Sanchez’s 9,173,000.

“A new stage begins,” Fujimori wrote on the social media platform X on Friday.

“We assume it with responsibility, humility, and a deep sense of duty. Each day of this transition process is an opportunity to listen, engage in dialogue, and arrive prepared at the start of the new government.”

Fujimori is the daughter of the late former President Alberto Fujimori,    who had been jailed for human rights abuses.

After running on a platform of cracking down on crime, she has promised to “unite the country”, which has dealt with years of political turmoil and a stagnating economy.

Fujimori and Sanchez reached the run-off vote after defeating 33 other candidates, a record-large field, in April’s general election.

But delays in April’s ballot distributions — and lengthy vote counts after both rounds of voting — have dogged the election, prompting different political interests to cry foul.

Sanchez, who had strong support among rural and Indigenous voters, alleged irregularities and fraud in the vote count, but he has not provided any evidence.

Instead, he has pointed to a change in election procedures as a sign of malfeasance. A new policy came into effect during the election that loosened the mandates around digitising overseas vote tallies.

Election monitors, however, caution that no proof of vote irregularities has emerged so far.

Reporting from the Peruvian capital Lima, Al Jazeera correspondent Mariana Sanchez pointed out that Fujimori’s victory was aided by a boost of overseas support.

“He [Roberto Sanchez] won the most amount of votes in Peru, but the votes from abroad took the balance in favour of Fujimori,” Al Jazeera’s Sanchez said.

She added that Sanchez may seek to rally his base in the coming weeks to have Fujimori swiftly impeached once she is sworn in.

Such impeachments have been common in Peru, where the constitution permits removing a president on broad grounds like “moral incapacity”.

Fujimori is set to become Peru’s ninth president in 10 years when she takes office in late July, on Peru’s independence day.

(Aljazeera)