On June 5, 2026, Roberto Sánchez said it without hesitation: “As a democratic man, I will accept the results. I commit myself to the country.” Yesterday, 18 days later, with 99.71% of the minutes counted and more than 40 thousand votes against him, that same man announced that he will not recognize a possible government of Keiko Fujimori. The promise lasted exactly as long as it took to lose.
READ ALSO
The maneuver has a known script. Pedro Castillo also invoked democracy when it suited him and ended up carrying out a coup d’état that landed him in jail. Sánchez was his minister, his candidate, he inherited his hat and, apparently, he also inherited his crisis manual: deny reality, accuse the institutions and take the dispute to the streets. False democrat, just like his mentor.
The concrete thing is this: Sánchez asks to annul the votes of nearly 300 thousand Peruvians who voted legally from abroad, where Keiko Fujimori won by a landslide. He does not present adulterated minutes, he does not exhibit expert reports, he does not cite any international observer who has endorsed his complaint of “fraud in development.” The phrase is designed to sound serious without having to prove it. Accusing without proving is not defending the vote, it is annulling the one that does not favor you.
Here we should question all those who signed the agreement “Political leaders for governability and recovery of democracy” in support of the Together for Peru candidate. Did that pact contemplate the right to ignore an election when the result is not favorable? It would be good if they responded, because their silence makes them complicit in what is happening now. Nobody denies Sánchez the right to exhaust the corresponding legal avenues before the JNE. But to announce from now on that you will not recognize the government that results from that proclamation, to call for marches under the slogan of the resistance and to accuse the ONPE and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of fraud without a single document to support it is to seek to kick the board as Pedro Castillo did in December 2022.
Democracy is not a speech that is held up like a suit that one puts on when one wins. Either it is always worn, with all its inconveniences, or it is not worn at all. Sánchez should know this and those who supported him should remind him, otherwise he is nothing more than a false democrat who tried to deceive his voters in the second round with false convictions.
