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Ouster of Peru’s third president since 2021 a sign of fragmenting society, politics
Peru’s interim president José Jerí was censured and removed by the country’s congress in February after just four months on the job. He was ousted for ethical failures following several scandals and replaced by current interim president José María Balcázar.
Jerí was the latest in a list of Peruvian presidents to be removed from office before completing their terms. His ouster occurred less than two months before the upcoming general elections, scheduled for April 12.
The elections are notable for the record number of competing parties and candidates for the presidency. No fewer than 36 candidates are competing for the country’s highest office, with none polling higher than 10%.
These two elements – Jerí’s removal and the record number of presidential hopefuls – are not coincidental. Rather, they are symptoms of a profound institutional crisis.
Over the past decade, instability has come to define Peru’s political landscape, as successive congresses and presidents have become locked in a struggle for power.
How can this persistent tug-of-war be explained? And is there hope for a reversal?
Jerí was the third president not to finish their mandate since Peru’s last elections in 2021. His predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was ousted by congress in October 2025 amid corruption allegations and criticism over her handling of rising insecurity. Before her, Pedro Castillo, elected in 2021, was removed from office and jailed after attempting a self-coup.
This pattern of rapid presidential turnover is not unprecedented: during the 2011-16 period, four presidents also held office in quick succession. The long-running instability is primarily caused by three core mechanisms: social fragmentation, political fragmentation and the normalisation of extraordinary measures.
Peruvian society has lost many of the shared narratives – the stories through which we understand society – that once helped organise political conflict and representation. Class-based identities and the left-right divide, which previously structured social relations and electoral choices, have steadily eroded.
In their place, a fragmented landscape of competing identities has emerged – regional, gendered, ethnic and occupational. None of these is strong enough to form a basis for national politics on its own.
This social fragmentation is mirrored by political fragmentation. Peru’s party system has all but disappeared, making way for personalistic parties, high turnover among politicians and weak ties between representatives and voters.
The way politics works has been changed because of more opportunistic behaviour by members of congress who know they’ll have short careers due to their weak relationships with constituents.
In the last decade, congress has increasingly relied on tools such as censure. As a result, political conflict is no longer resolved through negotiation or electoral cycles, but through institutional breakdown.
These elements result in a particular form of democratic backsliding, a concept which means the weakening of the institutions which make democracy work. We tend to think of struggling democracies as countries where leaders become increasingly autocratic and seek to increase their power.
US President Donald Trump is a good example of this. Since the beginning of his second term, he has weaponised various government institutions to attack political opponents, launch immigration crackdowns and impose tariffs. However, backsliding in current-day Peru works differently.
Due to political fragmentation and the normalisation of extreme measures like censure, Peru is not suffering from the concentration of power in the hands of one person. Rather, the country is experiencing the dilution of power into the hands of politicians attached to parties which have mostly ceased to represent the interests of the people and who are acting in their short-term interests alone.
Democracy is eroding not because of a tyrant, but because its support beams are being hollowed out from within.
It is highly unlikely that we will see much change to this situation in the near future. Many elements commonly needed to reverse democratic backsliding are not present in Peru today.
For instance, we are unlikely to see the election of a strong and unified pro-democracy coalition backed by a resourceful civil society. The upcoming elections are shaping up to be the most divided in history, with a record number of candidates for the presidency and a highly divided electorate.
In addition, the Peruvian state is facing crisis of legitimacy: most citizens distrust the government, believing it prioritises political and economic elites rather than the public interest.
Another election and another president are not likely to solve Peru’s central issue: the erosion of the institutions that once connected citizens, parties and the state. Without rebuilding mechanisms of representation and accountability, elections alone are more likely to reproduce instability rather than resolve it.
Étienne Sinotte is PhD Student in Political Science, McGill University.
This article was first published on The Conversation.
Source: Scroll
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