Though many associate Keiko Fujimori with the sins of her father, she easily won a congressional seat and is likely to use her new political clout to help with his return to Peru.

BY TYLER BRIDGES

LIMA - Dozens of people at a polling station chanted ''Murderer! Murderer!'' when Keiko Fujimori voted in Sunday's presidential election.

Friendly and attentive, the 30-year old congressional candidate hardly seemed deserving of such commotion. But the screams were more directed at her father, Alberto Fujimori, wanted in Peru on more than a dozen charges stemming from his heavy-handed presidency, 1990-2000.

''She represents someone who was a dictator, who was corrupt and who violated human rights,'' said Congressman Jorge del Castillo. ``She's a Trojan Horse.''

EASY WIN

If so, she should be giving pause to Peru's establishment. Keiko Fujimori easily won more votes than any of the other 2,600 candidates for Congress in Sunday's election.

''People are grateful to my father and put their thanks in me,'' she said in fluent English, in an interview at her home. ``People love my father a lot.''

That may be, but the Peruvian government is seeking to extradite her father from Chile, where he has been jailed since an apparent attempt in November to return to Peru. Keiko Fujimori blames his troubles on his imprisoned spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos and believes he will return to Peru -- as an exonerated man, in time to run for the next presidential election in 2011.

''He loves Peru so much,'' she said. ``I'm sure he'll be in politics.''

Maxwell Cameron, a University of British Columbia professor who follows Peru closely, said Keiko Fujimori will use her new-found political muscle to cut deals aimed at dropping the charges against her father.

''That, in effect, is her entire political agenda, getting her father back to Peru through the front door,'' he said. ``She'll make that the quid pro quo for her support within the Congress.''

With Keiko Fujimori leading the slate, Fujimori's party, Alliance for the Future, won 14 seats in the 120-member unicameral Congress, up from three seats in the outgoing Congress. Ollanta Humala's Peru Union party won the most seats, about 40, followed by Alan García's Apra party with 38 and Lourdes Flores' National Unity party with 20. Smaller parties won the remaining seats.

Humala led the presidential vote but will face a runoff against García or Flores. Martha Chávez, the presidential candidate for Fujimori's party, garnered only 7 percent of the vote.

ATTENTION GETTER

But Keiko Fujimori's run for congress has been garnering much attention, with reporters from Japan, Chile, Spain, the United States and elsewhere trooping to her middle-class home in the Surco neighborhood of Lima.

She was only 14 when her father, a little-known university president, was elected president of Peru in 1990 with a mandate to pull the country out of the abyss. He succeeded spectacularly by crushing two guerrilla groups, extinguishing a 7,000 percent hyperinflation and reviving the economy.

But he also shut down Congress in what was called a ''self-coup,'' and allegedly created paramilitary death squads, bribed opposition congressmen and media critics and punished any dissident voices within government.

Keiko Fujimori served as her father's first lady beginning in 1994, after her parents went through a very public and bitter divorce.

''She was impressive: articulate, poised and mature,'' said Dennis Jett, U.S. ambassador to Peru during Alberto Fujimori's final years in power. ``I never got the idea she wielded a lot of influence.''

LIFE IN THE U.S.

After her father resigned, Fujimori moved to the United States and enrolled at Columbia University's business school. It was there that she met Mark Villanella, a self-described ''Jersey guy'' with the brawny arms of a former high school wrestler. They married in 2004.

Last November, she went to Chile to visit her father, who had lived in Japan, the land of his parents, since his resignation in 2000.

''He asked me if I could run,'' she said.

She demurred initially, Fujimori said. She had planned to return to Peru in three to five years after completing her master's degree from Columbia, paid off her student loans and socked away some money. Besides, she was still weary from living under the watchful eye of others and knew firsthand just how bare-knuckled Peruvian politics could be.

In December, her father's political allies began pressuring her to run for Congress. She felt the tug of family duty and a desire to revive government programs launched by her father that helped the poor and made him so popular in shantytowns across the country.

''The hardest thing was to tell Mark's parents,'' she said. Villanella quit his new job at IBM, is still learning Spanish and reports that he is enjoying the ride so far.

For every person who might hate Alberto Fujimori, there is another who worships him.

Juan Silva, a 34-year-old taxi driver, said he voted for Humala for president but then split his ticket and voted for Keiko Fujimori for Congress.

''She's a well-prepared girl,'' Silva said. ``If [Alberto Fujimori] returned, I'd vote for him. He did everything for us.''