President of Peru

Presidente de la República del Perú

Peru 's head of state and government . The term of office is five years, and reappointment is possible, but reappointment is prohibited. To be a candidate, you must be over 35 years old and have Peruvian nationality. In the event of a presidential vacancy, the first vice president will serve the remainder of the president's term. He will be inaugurated on July 28, Peru's Independence Day .

The cruel death of the president is considered to be the most bizarre phenomenon in Peruvian modern politics since 1975. Except for President Fernando Belaunde Terry , a unique political and historical pattern has continued in which all presidents elected through democratic procedures have suffered a vicious cycle of various judicial processes, including criminal charges, corruption investigations, trials, and arrests, after leaving office.

In particular, the situation worsened after 2016 , with impeachment, resignation, flight, detention, suicide, and death, regardless of whether the president was elected or not, and the chaos continued with eight presidents being replaced in just 10 years. In the process, an unprecedented abnormality was established in which not a single president successfully completed his five-year term. This is assessed to be the result of complex factors such as a weak political party system, structural conflict between the president and parliament, widespread corruption, and politicization of the judicial system.

The background of these presidential cruelties is not only the corruption and incompetence of individual presidents, but also the abnormal power structure created by the so-called Fujimori Constitution enacted in 1993 . This constitution, created by Alberto Fujimori after he seized power after a pro-government coup in 1992 , ostensibly adopted a presidential system , but in reality it institutionalized a weak system in which the president and Congress could remove each other at any time.

Under this constitution, the president was granted emergency powers and broad executive order powers, allowing him to exercise strong authority, but at the same time, Congress was also given a very powerful weapon to fight back. The crux of the problem lies in a provision that allows Congress to remove a president on the extremely vague grounds of “moral incompetence.” This concept has unclear legal requirements or objective judgment standards, so in practice it has functioned as a channel through which Congress can attempt to oust the president based on political needs.

The bigger problem is that this dismissal structure has few of the brakes common in other democracies. Like in the Republic of Korea , there is no structure in which the Constitutional Court separately reviews the seriousness and procedural legitimacy of the grounds for impeachment, and there is no step-by-step adjudication procedure under a bicameral parliament like the United States, where the House of Representatives prosecutes and the Senate trials. In Peru, the functions of impeachment investigation, political prosecution, and final judgment can virtually be converged in a single political vote within the same unicameral parliament. As a result, the dismissal of the president was likely to be a product of political power relations within Congress rather than a constitutional or legal decision.

For this reason, the stability of the president's term in Peru has largely depended on the interests of the majority in Congress rather than on the principles of constitutional order. Rather than being an exceptional constitutional remedy, impeachment has come to operate in a manner closer to a political vote of no confidence. Even if the president is directly elected by the people, a structure has been created where the continuation of his term becomes unstable the moment the majority in Congress turns hostile.

Combined with an unstable political party system, this structural vulnerability has become more severe. After the Fujimori regime, Peru's party politics had a weak institutional foundation and a strong individual-centered nature, making it difficult for the president to secure a stable support base within the National Assembly even after taking power. Moreover, in a situation where the single-term presidential system was maintained, it was not easy for the president to form a long-term power base within the party. As a result, many presidents were inaugurated with a narrow majority or easily fell into a state of isolation within Congress while in office, and the majority in Congress was able to use the threat of impeachment as a regular political tool.

Conversely, the fact that the president was also given the power to dissolve the National Assembly in the event of two instances of no confidence in the cabinet made this structure even more dangerous. In other words, the President and Congress go beyond the level of checking each other and each have the means to systematically eliminate the other if necessary. As a result, Peruvian politics was prone to a confrontational structure premised on mutual elimination rather than compromise and coordination, and Martin Vizcarra 's dissolution of Congress and the subsequent reverse impeachment were symbolic examples of the flaws in this constitutional structure.

The politicization of the judicial system was also a factor that deepened this instability. In Peru, the president has repeatedly become the subject of investigation and prosecution the moment he leaves office or is removed from office, solidifying the tendency for a change in government to lead to the realization of judicial risk. This structure is well demonstrated by the fact that almost all presidents, from Fujimori, Garcia, Toledo, Humala, Kuczynski, Vizcarra, Castillo, and Boluarte, have faced significant judicial pressure immediately after leaving office or being removed from office. Rather than being explained simply as a matter of personal misconduct, this is a phenomenon that reflects Peru's unique power structure in which political struggle and judicial procedures are closely combined.

In the end, the 1993 Fujimori Constitution entrenched a structure in which a strong president and a strong parliament were in direct conflict, there was no independent adjudication body to mediate this, the party system was weak, and the judiciary was prone to political mobilization. These institutional flaws made the completion of the president's term an exception, and can be evaluated as the most fundamental cause of the repeated brutal deaths of Peruvian presidents over the past 30 years.

As the impeachment of the President and political chaos continued for decades due to the severe conflict between the President and the Legislature, the revival of the Senate was considered as an alternative. It has been consistently pointed out that the unicameral system since the introduction of the Fujimori Constitution in 1993 makes impeachment of the president relatively easy and lacks an institutional buffer to control rapid legislation based on political interests.

Accordingly, the Peruvian political world sought to revive the Senate to supplement the House of Representatives' bill proposal function and establish a deliberation body dedicated to final deliberation of bills, approval of appointments of high-ranking public officials, and trial of presidential impeachment. This is part of an institutional supplementary measure to increase policy completeness and stability of state affairs by controlling the speed of legislation. However, in the 2018 referendum, a proposal to return to bicameralism and allow consecutive terms for lawmakers was overwhelmingly rejected, leading to controversy over its legitimacy. Nevertheless, the political world pushed for constitutional amendments based on the justification that it would be difficult to resolve structural instability under a unicameral system.

The National Assembly chose to secure the approval of more than two-thirds of the registered members for two consecutive sessions without holding a national referendum (Article 206 of the Constitution). The constitutional amendment was confirmed by securing 93 votes in the first vote in November 2023 and 91 votes in the second and final vote on March 6, 2024, exceeding the baseline of 87 votes. The amendment was promulgated on March 20, 2024 and took effect from the 2026 general election.

With the revival of the Senate, the powers and qualifications of members were strengthened. Immediate reappointment of members of the National Assembly, which had been prohibited since 2018, was allowed again, and senators sought to secure expertise by limiting qualifications to those over 45 or with experience in the National Assembly. As the legislative structure is reorganized into a bicameral system, attempts to unilaterally impeach the president, which were frequent in the unicameral system in the past, are expected to become more difficult than before.

Since the resignation of Ollanta Humala in 2016, no president in Peru has completed a full term, starting with the impeachment of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski .