Peru’s President Puts Himself On a Path To Nowhere
Former teacher Pedro Castillo has taken over as the Latin American country’s new leader at a time of deep divisions. His debut bodes poorly.
Nice hat, wrong platform
Photographer: Miguel Yovera/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Peru’s new president, the country’s fifth in five years, has had a rough start. Unfortunately for this Covid-battered economy, it looks unlikely to get better.
A leftist political novice who ran as candidate for a Marxist party and swept to power on a wave of pandemic anger, former teacher Pedro Castillo had to wait six weeks to be announced as the official winner of the presidential runoff, as his rival piled in with accusations of fraud and challenges to the vote count. An opponent has been elected leader of a split legislature in which Castillo’s Free Peru does not have a majority. Tensions in his own camp between moderates and extremists have been so fraught that he was sworn in on Wednesday without a cabinet.