On Nov. 9, only five months before the next presidential elections, Peru was left without a leader. Martín Vizcarra, president since March 2018, was removed by Congress on still-unproven corruption charges. Protests in the streets against this measure and against Manuel Merino, the new acting president, led Merino to resign less than a week after taking office, along with all his ministers. Francisco Sagasti, the current president, has brought calm—but probably only for the moment. In a country riven by deep crises, from COVID-19 to economic devastation, the instability at the top is putting everything in danger.
The current instability in Peru began in 2016, when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski won the presidency of the country by defeating Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori—sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2007 for corruption and serious crimes against humanity—by a razor-thin margin.
