LIMA, April 10, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - Peru's 35-strong presidential race reached a crescendo Thursday, with candidates making a final pitch to voters tired of crime and chronic political dysfunction.

There are few clear frontrunners and any one of a dozen candidates could conceivably pass to June's second round of voting and become Peru's ninth president in a decade.

The most well-known candidates in Sunday's election include a popular male comic, the daughter of a brutal autocrat and a former Lima mayor who likens himself to a cartoon pig.

None is polling above the mid-teens, far short of the 50 percent needed to win outright.

In central Lima, hundreds of supporters of Rafael Lopez Aliaga gathered, waving blue and white flags and chanting, "Porky presidente!" -- a lighthearted embrace of their candidate's resemblance to the famed cartoon pig.

MCs blasted salsa and chest-rattling bass lines while promising prizes to the most coquettish supporters.

Voting is compulsory in Peru, and about 27 million people can cast their ballots, including millions of first-time voters frustrated with the status quo.

Incumbent Jose Maria Balcazar, interim president for less than two months, is barred from running.

Forty-nine-year-old Alex Huamam, one of dozens of Lopez Aliaga supporters holding up a 120 meter-long Peruvian flag, said he was backing "Porky" because of his no-holds-barred approach to tackling crime.

"He will bring the changes that Peru needs," Huamam told AFP as a stream of supporters in furry pig costumes passed by.

Lopez Aliaga has launched Trump-style attacks on the media, claimed the polls were rigged against him and styled his policies on El Salvador's Nayib Bukele - a poster boy for Latin America's growing wave of right-wing populists.

Lourdes Calle. 61, was backing "Porky" because "he isn't scared. He's going to take on corruption and criminality that are the root of Peru's problems."

"The situation in the country is critical. The governments that we have had in the last ten years have been awful. We've had almost a new president every year," she told AFP. "We're sick of the lies."

Pocked with stifling jungles, brilliant snowcapped peaks and bone-dry deserts, this crucible of the Inca Empire has in recent years struggled with chronic political instability and a surge in organized crime.

Crime and punishment -

Echoing his core campaign message, Lopez Aliaga's closing rally was held in the shadow of the Ministry of Defense.

Not far away, his main rival Keiko Fujimori held a duelling rally of her own, with a large contingent of women voters.

"We want to give a woman the opportunity to lead us out of this chaos that we have been living in," said Silvia Arenas, a 37-year-old artisan who weaves alpaca wool.

Fujimori's father Alberto was the president in the 1990s and was later convicted of human rights violations, including operating death squads.

She led with 15 percent in an Ipsos poll published last Sunday, the last one authorized before the election.

"It is all but certain that Sunday's vote will fail to crown a winner," said Nicolas Saldias of the Economist Intelligence Unit.

He predicted that Fujimori and Lopez Aliaga had the best chance of avoiding the fate of the most recent presidents, who have failed to complete their terms.

"Assuming that either Fujimori or Lopez Aliaga wins the presidential election, they will have decent representation in Congress that will likely prevent any attempt to oust them from power," he said.

Latinobarometro pollsters found more than 90 percent of Peruvians have "little" or "no confidence" in their government and parliament, the highest figures in Latin America.

Meanwhile, a kaleidoscope of foreign criminal gangs from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico compete with homegrown rivals for control of lucrative trafficking routes and other illicit business.

Peruvian police once received 3,200 reports of extortion a year. Now they get at least 26,500 -- and that is unlikely to be the full total.