The Peruvian Elections as a Demonstration of the Current Political Risk in the Country
Again, Peru is going through elections under troubled and unstable circumstances. This is a country where one can observe a rare and destructive phenomenon of mass deposition of presidents over the years. In the last ten years alone, eight political figures have risen to the highest position of executive power, but none have remained in that position for the full five-year term.
There is an inherent risk in Peru’s government system given that there are several obstacles to ensure a continuity of what is proposed in the elections by any candidate. If an elected government is impeached with little time to serve, then the projects that had begun to be implemented are forgotten and other governments may start other different projects.
The number of presidential candidates in Peru is impressive. In the first round of the 2026 election process, 35 candidates were registered for the poll, a record number (Palacios, 2026). None of these candidates reached at least 20% of the total of votes (CNN en Español, 2026). This reveals an institutional fragility capable of stagnating a country and keeping it stuck to populism and the propaganda of the clashes between left and right in the country.
As already mentioned, in the last 10 years, Peru has had 8 different presidents. Only four of these completed more than a year in government, and they were: Pedro Paulo Kuczinsky (2016-2018), Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020), Pedro Castillo (2021-2022) and Dina Boluarte (2022-2025). The reasons for the large number of impeachments range from the political instability of the country, crises of corruption, influence peddling and difficulty in maintaining the public security system.
The following graph shows the comparison of the time each president was in power compared to the period in which the terms should have been held if there were no impeachments (Quintana, 2026):
In the 1993 Peruvian constitution, according to article 112 the presidential term is established for a period of 5 years and does not allow re-election (Peruvian Constitution, 1993). In addition, Article 113 states that the president may be removed from office if permanent moral or physical incapacity is proven, which must be decreed by parliament. There are other possible reasons for the removal of the president, but this reason alone led to the impeachment of Martín Vizcarra, Pedro Castillo and Dina Boluarte, all of which happened in this decade. In all of these cases, the parliament understood that there were serious failures in the execution of the functions of presidents and that the mandataries lacked the moral capacity to remain in power. With a constitution formed in this way, with a widely fragmented parliament and a tendency toward populism, a vicious cycle is created in which the impossibility of continued government persists.
Note that there is a crucial element of subjectivity in article 113. This subjectivity is vital for the parliament to deliberate on impeachment matters and can also be used as a tool of the political opposition to force the mandatary out of power. The constitutional design of the Peruvian state can work as a trap, enabling a battle of influence between the legislative and the executive. Therefore, the main issue is the institutional design.
This entire context is worsened by the ongoing political disputes between the right and left wing, a phenomenon that occurs in most Western countries nowadays. In the last elections held in 2016 and 2021, for example, no elected president was able to form a parliamentary majority for a stable base of support. This scenario eventually forced the country’s executive power to form constant and fragile alliances with interest groups.
Observe in the following graph the number of deputies per party in the Peruvian parliament in the periods 2021-2026 and 2026-2031, demonstrating the continued fragmentation of the Peruvian chamber of deputies after the parliamentary elections held in the first round of 2026 (El Peruano, 2026; and La República, 2026):
It should be remembered that, until 2026, the country had been without a Senate for over 30 years. However, during a plebiscite held in 2024, the population decided on the return of the Senate (Gonçalves, 2026). The Senate is also currently fragmented after the first-round election, as shown in the following graph (Ilustración Peruana Caretas, 2026):
The legislative branch, therefore, is a mirror of political instability in the country, which can demonstrate that the population as a whole does not trust the candidates presented in elections and must settle for the most populist options.
The elections in June 2026 follow in the same direction, with no candidates that the population can fully identify with, and fragmentation continues. This does not offer much hope for greater political coherence and improvements in the relationship between the executive and legislative powers in the country. It appears that Peru will again continue for the next five years with fragmentation and intrinsic challenges to maintaining government.
Bibliography
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