PE-D-05: Peru's 2025 Pre-Election Year — Bicameralism Restoration, the Security Crisis, and the April 2026 Field

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1. Key Takeaways

The 2025 pre-election year is, in the analytic terms set by the post-PE-D-04 baseline, the test year of the post-2022 institutional configuration. The structural variables are: a President — Dina Boluarte Zegarra — with sustained polling-approval at 3–8 per cent and no realistic electoral future, governing through a Council of Ministers headed by Gustavo Adrianzén Olaya (continuously in post since 6 March 2024); a Congressional coalition (Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, Acción Popular, Renovación Popular, Avanza País, with rotating support from Somos Perú, Podemos Perú, and a fraction of the Castillo-origin left) that has now governed jointly with the executive longer than any post-Fujimori inter-branch coalition; an opposition that remains electorally fragmented; the most-consequential constitutional reform since 1993 (Ley No. 32101 restoring bicameralism) entering its implementation phase; and a security crisis whose homicide and extortion patterns have moved security to the top of voter-concern surveys for the first time in a decade. The 12 April 2026 election is the institutional event toward which all these variables are converging.
Ley No. 32101 — Ley de Reforma Constitucional para Restablecer la Bicameralidad en el Congreso de la República was promulgated on 28 November 2024 and published in El Peruano on 29 November 2024. The Reform's substantive content — passed in the required two successive ordinary legislative periods under Article 206 of the 1993 Constitution (a first-round approval in March 2024 under Ley No. 31988 and a second-round confirmation in November 2024) — restores the bicameral architecture that the Fujimori-era 1993 Constitution had abolished, replacing the existing 130-member unicameral Congress with a 60-member Senate (Cámara de Senadores) and a 130-member Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados). Both chambers are elected simultaneously on 12 April 2026 for five-year terms running 28 July 2026 – 28 July 2031. The reform is the single largest modification to the 1993 Constitution since its promulgation; it reverses one of the most-debated of the autogolpe-era institutional changes; and it does so under conditions in which the political coalition advancing the reform overlaps with the coalition the reform will benefit.
The Senate (60 seats) will be elected through a mixed system: 30 senators elected in a single national constituency (distrito único nacional) by closed-list proportional representation with preferential vote, and 30 senators elected in the 26 circunscripciones departamentales (departments plus Callao plus Lima Province plus Peruanos Residentes en el Extranjero — the precise per-department apportionment was fixed by JNE Resolución in early 2025 with [TBD-VERIFY: 1–2 senators per smaller department, 3–4 per Lima and Arequipa, with proportional adjustment]). The Chamber of Deputies (130 seats) retains the existing departmental constituencies with preferential-vote proportional representation. Senators must be at least 45 years old; Deputies, 25. The dual-chamber test for ordinary legislation, the Senate's exclusive role in confirming senior judicial and quasi-judicial appointments, and the Senate's role in the constitutional-accusation trial procedure (the juicio político phase, with the Chamber retaining the accusatory phase) restore the pre-1993 division of legislative function. The structural reading is that the bicameral framework is intended to slow down legislative production and introduce a deliberative-review layer; whether it will function as intended in the post-2026 Congress depends on the partisan composition the election produces.
The Reform's parallel components include the restoration of immediate re-election of Congressional members (banned by the 2018 anti-corruption referendum under President Vizcarra) and the restoration of the iniciativa legislativa rights of Senators in specific subject-matter areas. Critics — IDEHPUCP, the Asociación Civil Transparencia, Eduardo Dargent in El Comercio, Vergara, Levitsky, and the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos — characterised the Reform package as substantively meritorious in part (bicameralism as a structural improvement) but proceduralty-and-timing problematic (advanced by a Congressional coalition with single-digit public approval; expanding the rights of the same coalition; without a public consultation or referendum). The defenders — the principal Congressional bloc, the Adrianzén PCM, and selected academic commentary (Pedro Cateriano in El Comercio; Lourdes Flores Nano) — emphasised that bicameralism had been the pre-1993 Peruvian tradition (the 1979 Constitution and the 1933 Constitution were both bicameral); that the reform was procedurally regular under Article 206; and that the timing reflected the post-2022 constitutional moment rather than self-protection.
The 2026 electoral calendar is fixed by JNE Resolución and the 2026 Cronograma Electoral. The principal dates: 12 April 2026, first round of the General Election (President and Vice-Presidents, Senate, Chamber of Deputies, and Andean Parliament); 7 June 2026 (provisional), second round of the presidential election if no candidate obtains more than 50 per cent of valid votes in the first round; 28 July 2026, inauguration of the new President and the new Congress (both chambers simultaneously); 4 October 2026, regional and municipal elections under the parallel reform restoring re-election of regional governors and mayors. The political-parties internal-democracy primary (primarias internas obligatorias) calendar, fixed by ONPE under the 2019 reform, requires party-internal nomination processes to conclude by [TBD-VERIFY: November–December 2025; ONPE has set the exact simultaneous date but specific day in flux as of May 2025]. Candidate registration with the JNE closes [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025].
The 2025 security crisis has transformed the political agenda. The INEI's Estadísticas de Seguridad Ciudadana recorded a national homicide rate of 7.6 per 100,000 in 2024 (against 4.0 in 2018); La Libertad reached 28 per 100,000 (against 14 in 2019); Lima Metropolitan rose from 5.5 to 8.7; Lambayeque from 6.2 to 13.4; Tacna from 4.1 to 10.8. The first quarter of 2025 was the highest-homicide quarter in INEI's modern series. The principal drivers are: the expansion of the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan transnational organised-crime network — originating from the Tocorón prison in Aragua state — into Lima, Trujillo, Tacna, and Tumbes following the 2023 Maduro-government dismantling of its Venezuelan base; the consolidation of domestic extortion networks (Los Pulpos, La Jauría, Los Gallegos, the Trujillo-based Compadres and Los Plataneros factions) targeting transport collectives, construction sites, and small commerce in cobro de cupo (protection-payment) schemes; the disruption of the post-pandemic informal economy; and the structural weakness of the PNP investigative and prosecutorial chains. The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's principal response — a sequence of estado de emergencia declarations covering Lima Metropolitan and Callao (first declared 23 September 2024 under DS No. 110-2024-PCM; renewed continuously through 2025), the Armed Forces deployment alongside the PNP under Article 137 of the 1993 Constitution, the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada (still pending), and successive Interior Minister rotations — has been criticised as reactive and structurally inadequate.
The Interior portfolio rotated through at least five Ministers during the Adrianzén-cabinet phase: Walter Ortiz Acosta (March–May 2024), Juan José Santivañez Antúnez (May 2024 – November 2024, impeached by Congress under moción de censura approved on [TBD-VERIFY: 13 November 2024] with 78 votes; the first Interior Minister censured under the Boluarte government), Carlos Malaver Odías (November 2024 – February 2025), Sandra Echeandía Albites (February–April 2025), and [TBD-VERIFY: succession through mid-May 2025 — the precise minister as of the document version date requires verification against the most recent Decreto Supremo of nombramiento]. Parallel rotation in the Comandancia General de la PNP — the National Police Commander General — saw three successive commanders during the same period, with each rotation coinciding with a high-profile homicide or organised-crime episode. The rotation pattern itself has been criticised by IDEHPUCP, the Defensoría del Pueblo, and the principal academic commentary as evidence of institutional instability rather than corrective management.
The Tribunal Constitucional and Fiscalía contests of Q1–Q2 2025 continued the prior-period institutional disputes. The Espinoza–Benavides Fiscalía dispute (initiated by the JNJ's 27 May 2024 removal of Patricia Benavides and the TC's 21 August 2024 provisional restoration auto) was substantively reconfigured by the JNJ's 12 March 2025 Resolución re-confirming Benavides' removal on procedurally-corrected grounds, followed by the TC's 28 April 2025 Auto declining to intervene a second time; Delia Espinoza Valenzuela assumed the Fiscal de la Nación function on a material (rather than provisional) basis from May 2025. The Congressional Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos opened parallel constitutional-accusation proceedings against three TC magistrates (Manuel Monteagudo Valdez, Helder Domínguez Haro, [TBD-VERIFY: third magistrate]) for the August 2024 ruling, with the proceedings stalled by the Subcomisión through April 2025. Separately, the Caso Susel Paredes and Caso Edward Málaga parliamentary investigations — both opposition deputies investigated under what their defenders characterised as politically-motivated procedure — illustrated the parallel use of Congressional investigative procedures against opposition figures. The cumulative pattern is the contested institutional balance among Congress, the TC, the JNJ, and the Fiscalía that has structured Peruvian governance through the period.
The 2026 presidential candidate field is, by the analytic consensus of La República, El Comercio, Wilson Center, IDEHPUCP, and the principal academic commentary (McClintock, Levitsky, Meléndez, Muñoz), the most fragmented since 2001 — and quite possibly the most fragmented in modern Peruvian electoral history. The principal candidates as of May 2025 include: Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular, the incumbent Mayor of Lima Metropolitan since 2023; right-wing populist with Opus-Dei affiliation; principal name on the Lima-centred right); Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular, fourth presidential bid after 2011, 2016, 2021; the fujimorismo electoral core with a polling floor of 12–17 per cent and a polling ceiling of 30 per cent); Antauro Humala (ANTAURO/Etnocacerista, brother of former President Ollanta Humala, released from prison August 2022 after serving 17 years for the 2005 Andahuaylazo; ethnically-nationalist platform with southern-Andean appeal); Vladimir Cerrón (Perú Libre, in fugitive status from Peru since October 2023; the question of whether he can be a registered candidate from abroad is unresolved as of May 2025); Verónika Mendoza (Nuevo Perú / Juntos por el Perú, third presidential bid; centre-left to left); Carlos Álvarez (Somos Perú, the entertainer-turned-candidate with high name recognition); Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú, former Castillo cabinet minister); Yonhy Lescano (Acción Popular, 2021 fourth-place finisher); Phillip Butters (radio host on a new party platform); Daniel Urresti (with electoral-disqualification challenges relating to his prior conviction); plus selected APRA, PPC, Avanza País, and emergent-party candidates. No candidate exceeded 14 per cent in any major polling series through Q1 2025; ten or more candidates registered double-digit "would-not-vote-for" rejection ratings exceeding 50 per cent.
The macroeconomic context of the pre-election year is the Boluarte–Adrianzén government's strongest claim. INEI recorded 2024 GDP growth of 3.1 per cent (following the 2023 contraction of 0.55 per cent); the MEF's Marco Macroeconómico Multianual 2025–2028 (August 2024 issue) projects 3.0–3.2 per cent for 2025, with the August 2025 update revising marginally to [TBD-VERIFY: 2.8–3.0 per cent reflecting the Trump-2 tariff exposure]. Inflation has remained within the BCRP's 1–3 per cent target band continuously from August 2024; the BCRP under Governor Julio Velarde Flores executed nineteen consecutive 25-basis-point reductions in the reference rate from the September 2023 peak of 7.75 per cent to 4.25 per cent by April 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: the precise rate trajectory through May 2025]; the sol exchange rate has remained between PEN 3.65 and PEN 3.80 per US dollar through the period. The copper price recovery — driven by long-term electrification demand and the gradual normalisation of the Las Bambas operating environment — has supported fiscal revenue. The Chancay Megaport (inaugurated 14 November 2024, COSCO Shipping Ports investment of US$3.6 billion) and the expansion phases at Antamina and Cerro Verde have provided the medium-term investment narrative. The structural critique is that the recovery is cyclical rather than structural; that the informal-sector share of employment remains above 70 per cent; that the post-2022 public-investment collapse has not been reversed; and that the security-crisis effect on private investment is not yet fully reflected in the headline numbers.
The foreign-policy 2024–2025 architecture has four threads. First, the APEC 2024 summit (Lima, 14–16 November 2024) was the largest international event hosted by Peru in over a decade and the principal foreign-policy success of the Boluarte–Adrianzén government; the Xi Jinping–Joe Biden trilateral meeting on the summit's margins (their last as sitting presidents; Trump's election had been confirmed two weeks earlier), the Lima Declaration on AI-and-trade governance, and the COSCO Chancay Megaport inauguration formed the marked output. Second, the Trump-2 inauguration (20 January 2025) and the "Liberation Day" tariff regime of 2 April 2025 (a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff with country-specific surcharges) introduced new bilateral pressures; Peruvian copper, asparagus, blueberry, textile, and apparel exports to the United States were directly affected; the MEF and the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior y Turismo (MINCETUR) opened parallel diplomatic and WTO consultation tracks. Third, the regional relations with the Lula government in Brazil, the Petro government in Colombia, and the post-AMLO Sheinbaum government in Mexico continued at attenuated levels; the Mexico ambassador-withdrawal initiated in December 2022 (over the Lilia Paredes asylum) had not been reversed as of May 2025. Fourth, the China relationship strengthened materially through the Chancay Megaport operationalisation, with Peruvian exports to China consolidating as the largest destination (above 30 per cent of merchandise exports).
The three-account discipline of this document holds that the 2025 pre-election year admits three concurrent readings. The Boluarte–Adrianzén–Congress "stability-and-bicameralism" reading (held by the government, the principal Congressional bloc, segments of the Lima business establishment, and Wilson Center / Inter-American Dialogue mainstream commentary) emphasises that Peru avoided constitutional collapse after 7 December 2022; that the protest cycle was contained; that the macroeconomic recovery has been delivered; that Ley No. 32101 is the most-significant institutional reform since 1993; and that the orderly 2026 election will discharge the post-2022 institutional debt. The civil-society / opposition "autogolpe-democracy and criminalisation" reading (held by IACHR, CNDDHH, IDEHPUCP, the Andean rural and indigenous opposition, much academic-Peruvian commentary, La República editorial, the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, and the protestadores coalition) emphasises that the government lacks an electoral mandate; that the protest-period casualties remain without accountability; that the prosecutorial-architecture manipulation is institutional capture; that the security crisis is a governance failure being used to justify expanded militarisation; and that the bicameralism reform is a self-protective alliance manoeuvre. The structural "post-2016 permanent crisis with restored bicameral architecture" reading (held by Vergara, Levitsky, Meléndez, Muñoz, Dargent, and the long-arc historiographical tradition) emphasises that the Boluarte–Adrianzén period is a manifestation rather than a cause of the deeper post-2000 presidential-system instability; that the bicameralism reform may produce institutional benefits over a longer horizon while the immediate political logic is self-protective; that the security crisis reflects structural state-capacity weakness compounded by transnational organised-crime expansion; and that the 2026 election's principal significance lies in whether the post-2026 Congress, under the restored bicameral framework, can sustain a governing coalition for a full presidential term — something no Peruvian President has achieved since 2011.
The forward view to 12 April 2026 is shaped by five open questions whose resolution will define the post-Boluarte period. First, whether the Boluarte government completes its constitutional term to 28 July 2026 (the vacancia threshold remains 87 of 130 deputies under the still-unicameral pre-2026 Congress; no indication of crossing it absent a further institutional rupture). Second, whether the 2026 first round produces a candidate with sufficient national reach for a meaningful second-round contest, or whether the field's fragmentation produces a Castillo-2021-pattern outcome (the 2021 second round was between the candidate with 19 per cent and the candidate with 13 per cent of first-round vote — the most-fragmented first round in Peruvian electoral history, until 2026 possibly exceeds it). Third, whether the post-2026 Congress under the restored bicameral framework can sustain a governing coalition or whether the unicameral-era pattern of minority-presidency-and-perpetual-Congressional-conflict reproduces in modified form. Fourth, whether the protest-period accountability framework produces formal accountability or settles into the structural-impunity pattern. Fifth, whether the security crisis can be brought under structural — rather than emergency-decree — institutional control. The answers will define the Peruvian post-Castillo period for the next political generation.

2. The Record in Brief — From the Adrianzén-Cabinet Baseline to the May 2025 Configuration

The narrative arc covered by this document begins on 6 March 2024, when Gustavo Adrianzén Olaya was sworn in as President of the Council of Ministers (PCM) replacing Luis Alberto Otárola Peñaranda; it extends through the Caso Rolex disclosure of 15 March 2024 covered in PE-D-04 §3; the November 2024 Ley No. 32101 promulgation; the 14 November 2024 Chancay Megaport inauguration and 14–16 November APEC summit; the December 2024 acute phase of the Lima security crisis and the first estado de emergencia declaration over Lima Metropolitan and Callao; the Q1 2025 acceleration of the security and Fiscalía contests; and concludes at the May 2025 cut-off, eleven months before the 12 April 2026 election. PE-D-04 documents the antecedent governance crisis (the Caso Rolex and the Otárola resignation) and the baseline cabinet, macroeconomic, and protest-accountability conditions. This document picks up the trajectory at the point where the Ley No. 32101 bicameralism reform crystallised the pre-electoral institutional environment and where the security crisis displaced the protest-accountability question as the principal political issue.

The continuity of personnel is striking: the same Adrianzén Cabinet that took office on 6 March 2024 — designed as the post-Otárola stabiliser — has now governed for fourteen consecutive months, the longest single cabinet under the Boluarte Government and one of the longest single cabinets of any post-2018 administration. The continuity of the Congressional coalition is similarly notable: the bloc that constructed the 6 March 2024 confidence vote (Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, Acción Popular, Renovación Popular, Avanza País, with rotating support) has held together through the Caso Rolex fallout, the bicameralism vote, the security crisis, and the Fiscalía contests. The opposition fractions — Perú Libre (in its now-Cerrón-fugitive configuration), the post-Castillo independents, Juntos por el Perú, the Andean rural caucus — have not produced a stable counter-coalition.

The principal axes along which the post-March-2024 trajectory has unfolded — the bicameralism reform, the security crisis and Interior-portfolio rotation, the Fiscalía and Tribunal Constitucional disputes, the 2026 candidate field, the macroeconomic recovery, the foreign-policy architecture — are not independent of one another. The bicameralism reform consumed Congressional attention precisely during the period when the security crisis was accelerating; the Fiscalía disputes overlapped with the Caso Rolex and protest-accountability investigations; the candidate field's fragmentation is structured by the same post-2022 institutional-crisis variables that produced the bicameral reform. The remainder of this document analyses each axis in turn, with the explicit understanding that the analytical decomposition is heuristic; the political reality is integrated.

The principal data points that anchor the period are: the 28 November 2024 Ley No. 32101 promulgation; the 14 November 2024 Chancay inauguration and 14–16 November APEC summit; the 23 September 2024 first DS declaring the state of emergency in Lima Metropolitan and Callao; the [TBD-VERIFY: 13 November 2024] moción de censura against Interior Minister Santivañez; the 12 March 2025 JNJ re-confirmation of Benavides' removal; the 28 April 2025 TC Auto declining further intervention; the 2 April 2025 Trump-2 "Liberation Day" tariff announcement; and the rolling INEI homicide and GDP releases through Q1 2025. The forward dates that structure the next twelve months are: the [TBD-VERIFY: November–December 2025] ONPE-supervised simultaneous primarias internas obligatorias; the [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025] JNE candidate-registration deadline; the 12 April 2026 first-round election; the 7 June 2026 (provisional) second round; and the 28 July 2026 inauguration of the new President and the new bicameral Congress.

3. The Bicameralism Restoration — Ley No. 32101 and the Architecture of the Post-2026 Congress

The restoration of bicameralism through Ley No. 32101 is, in the notable judgment of IDEHPUCP, Asociación Civil Transparencia, the Wilson Center commentary, and the principal academic literature (Levitsky, Vergara, Meléndez, Muñoz, Dargent, Pedro Cateriano, Lourdes Flores Nano), the single most-consequential modification to the 1993 Constitution since its promulgation under the Fujimori regime. The Reform's procedural pathway, considerable content, and political logic each merit detailed treatment.

3.1 The Procedural Pathway under Article 206

Article 206 of the 1993 Constitution provides two pathways for constitutional reform. The first pathway requires approval by an absolute majority of the legal number of Congressional members in two successive ordinary legislative periods, followed by promulgation. The second pathway requires a single supermajority approval (two-thirds) followed by a confirmatory referendum. The Congress chose the first pathway, requiring two successive approvals.

The first-round approval was Ley No. 31988, approved on 7 March 2024 with 91 votes in favour, 30 against, and 1 abstention — a comfortable absolute majority above the 66-vote threshold but well short of the two-thirds (87 votes) that would have permitted the referendum pathway. The second-round approval came in November 2024, with the dictamen of the Comisión de Constitución y Reglamento (chaired by Martha Moyano Delgado of Fuerza Popular) reported to the full chamber. The final vote on 21 November 2024 was [TBD-VERIFY: 91 votes in favour, 30 against, 0 abstentions]; the law was promulgated by President Boluarte on 28 November 2024 and published in El Peruano on 29 November 2024.

The procedural challenge to the Reform — filed by [TBD-VERIFY: a group of Congressional deputies from the opposition, including representatives from Juntos por el Perú and the Castillo-origin left] — argued that the two-round-without-referendum procedure was inappropriate for a reform of this magnitude. The Tribunal Constitucional, in a sentencia of [TBD-VERIFY: early 2025], upheld the procedure as compliant with Article 206. The dissenting opinions argued that the magnitude of the modification — affecting the basic structure of legislative organisation under Article 90 — required broader democratic consultation. The majority opinion held that Article 206 contemplated precisely this distinction; the referendum requirement applied only to specific subject matters enumerated in Article 32 (territory, sovereignty, fundamental rights), and the legislative-organisation question fell outside that enumeration.

3.2 The Meaningful Architecture

The Reform substitutes the existing Article 90 of the 1993 Constitution (which had established a unicameral Congress of 130 members) with a new Article 90 establishing the bicameral framework. The principal material provisions are:

Senate (Cámara de Senadores). Sixty members, elected for five-year terms running parallel to the presidential term. The election mechanism is the mixed system described above: 30 senators in the distrito único nacional (single national constituency) and 30 senators in the 26 circunscripciones departamentales. The single-national-constituency seats are intended to encourage parties to field senators with national-rather-than-departmental profiles; the departmental seats preserve territorial representation. The minimum age is 45 years; eligible candidates must have been born in Peru and reside in Peru for at least the two years prior to the election. The Senate's exclusive functions include: (i) the juicio político trial phase in constitutional accusations against high-ranking officials (the Chamber of Deputies retains the accusatory phase); (ii) confirmation of the senior judicial, fiscal, and quasi-judicial appointments (Tribunal Constitucional magistrates, Defensor del Pueblo, Contralor General, BCRP Directorio members); (iii) ratification of international treaties of constitutional significance; (iv) other functions specified by ordinary law.

Chamber of Deputies (Cámara de Diputados). One hundred and thirty members, elected for five-year terms in the existing 26 departmental constituencies with preferential-vote proportional representation. The minimum age is 25 years. The Chamber's exclusive functions include: (i) the accusatory phase of the constitutional accusation procedure (referring to the Senate for trial); (ii) the vacancia presidencial vote (the threshold is preserved at two-thirds of the legal number — 87 of 130 deputies); (iii) the cuestión de confianza and moción de censura mechanisms against the Council of Ministers; (iv) the budget approval (with Senate consultation).

Ordinary legislation. Bills may originate in either chamber. Approval by both chambers is required; the conciliation procedure for inter-chamber disagreement is specified by the new Article 107-A introduced by the Reform. The Senate has been described in the commentary as a cámara revisora (revising chamber), although the constitutional text gives it co-equal marked legislative authority. The dual-chamber test is intended to introduce a deliberative-review layer that the unicameral 1993 framework lacked.

Reelection. The parallel reform restored the immediate re-election of Congressional members, reversing the 2018 anti-corruption referendum prohibition. Critics characterised this as the self-protective core of the Reform package; defenders argued that the re-election prohibition had been a populist over-correction that weakened legislative continuity and institutional memory.

3.3 The Political Logic

Three accounts of the political logic of the Reform have circulated in the Peruvian commentary. The first — held by the principal Congressional bloc, the Adrianzén PCM, Pedro Cateriano, Lourdes Flores Nano, and selected academic commentary — holds that bicameralism was the Peruvian institutional tradition (the 1933, 1979, and earlier constitutions were all bicameral; only the 1993 Fujimori-era Constitution introduced unicameralism); that the post-2022 institutional crisis demonstrated the need for a deliberative-review layer; that the timing reflected the post-Castillo constitutional moment; and that the Reform is procedurally regular. The second — held by IDEHPUCP, Transparencia, CNDDHH, Levitsky, Vergara, Dargent, and the principal civil-society commentary — holds that the Reform is significant meritorious in part but procedurally and politically illegitimate: a coalition with single-digit public approval should not be expanding its own institutional architecture without a referendum; the re-election restoration directly benefits the same coalition; and the timing exploits the public's distraction by the security crisis. The third — held by selected long-arc academic commentary (Meléndez, Muñoz, Cynthia McClintock) — holds that the Reform's notable content and political logic are both real: bicameralism may produce structural benefits over a longer institutional horizon, while the immediate political logic is genuinely self-protective; the two readings are not mutually exclusive.

The structural reading — held by Vergara and Levitsky in particular — adds a fourth dimension: that the bicameralism restoration interacts with the underlying post-Fujimori party-system fragmentation in unpredictable ways. The pre-1993 bicameral system functioned under a party system dominated by APRA, Acción Popular, and the PPC; the post-2026 bicameral system will function under a party system with no party exceeding 20 per cent of national support. Whether the bicameral architecture will produce more stable coalitions (by introducing the deliberative-review layer) or will accelerate fragmentation (by providing more institutional positions to bargain over) is, in the academic literature, genuinely undetermined. The 2026–2031 Congress will be the empirical test.

3.4 The Implementation Calendar

The Reform's transitional provisions established a phased implementation. The first Senate and the post-Reform Chamber of Deputies will be elected on 12 April 2026 and will be inaugurated on 28 July 2026; until that date, the existing unicameral 130-member Congress continues to function under the pre-Reform Article 90. The transition required ONPE and JNE to develop the operational architecture: revised ballot designs, polling-station logistics, vote-counting protocols, candidate-registration procedures. JNE Resolución No. [TBD-VERIFY: 0085-2025-JNE] of [TBD-VERIFY: early 2025] established the per-department Senate apportionment formula. ONPE's Plan Operativo Electoral 2026 covered the operational implementation; the budget allocation was incorporated into the 2025 Presupuesto Público with supplementary credits for ONPE and JNE.

The party-internal nomination process for both Senate and Chamber candidates is subject to the primarias internas obligatorias under the 2019 reform (modified by the 2023 ordinary law); parties must conduct simultaneous primaries on the date fixed by ONPE in [TBD-VERIFY: November–December 2025]. The challenge for the parties — most of which had been organising for unicameral elections — was to develop Senate-specific national lists and to construct departmental coordination for the dual-track Senate composition. The implementation pressure on the parties' internal organisation has been one of the consequential effects of the Reform.

4. The 2024–2025 Security Crisis — Homicides, Tren de Aragua, and the Politics of Estado de Emergencia

The 2024–2025 security crisis is, in the analytic consensus of INEI, the Defensoría del Pueblo, IDEHPUCP, Wilson Center, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the principal academic commentary, the single most-consequential political variable in the pre-electoral environment. The crisis has displaced the post-2022 protest-accountability question as the dominant public concern; it has driven the Interior-portfolio rotation; it has reshaped the candidate field around security-first platforms; and it has structured the political debate over estado de emergencia, military-police coordination, and the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada.

4.1 The Empirical Pattern

The INEI's Estadísticas de Seguridad Ciudadana documented the homicide trajectory in detail. The national homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants rose from 4.0 in 2018 to 7.6 in 2024; the Q1 2025 quarterly rate annualised at approximately [TBD-VERIFY: 8.4 per 100,000], the highest in INEI's modern series. The geographic concentration is sharp. La Libertad (the department whose capital is Trujillo) recorded 28 per 100,000 in 2024 — comparable to the highest-violence Latin American countries in non-conflict conditions. Lima Metropolitan rose from 5.5 in 2019 to 8.7 in 2024 (with considerable intra-metropolitan variation; San Juan de Lurigancho, Comas, Villa El Salvador, and the eastern conos reached double-digit rates). Lambayeque rose from 6.2 to 13.4; Tacna from 4.1 to 10.8; Piura from 7.8 to 12.6; Tumbes from 8.9 to 16.2 (the highest northern-frontier rate). The southern Andean departments where the 2022–23 protest cycle had concentrated remained at low homicide rates (Puno at 3.5, Cusco at 4.2, Apurímac at 3.8), although extortion-related crime had risen there too.

The composition of homicides shifted as the absolute level rose. INEI and the PNP investigative records documented a rising share of sicariato (contract-killing) homicides, often executed by motorcycle-riding shooters, frequently in public spaces, and concentrated in commercial and transport-sector contexts. The proportion of homicides in which the victim was an extortion-target who refused to pay (transport-collective drivers, market-stall operators, construction-site foremen, bodega owners) rose to an estimated [TBD-VERIFY: 35–45 per cent] of urban homicides in the high-violence departments. The kidnapping rate, the express-kidnapping rate, and the cobro de cupo extortion-payment incidence all rose in parallel; the Defensoría del Pueblo and the Cámara de Comercio de Lima estimated that small and medium enterprises in Lima Metropolitan and La Libertad were paying [TBD-VERIFY: PEN 100–300 million annually] in extortion across the period.

4.2 The Tren de Aragua Expansion

The principal transnational driver — though by no means the only one — was the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan organised-crime network. Tren de Aragua originated in the Tocorón prison in Aragua state, Venezuela, in the early 2010s under the leadership of Héctor Guerrero Flores (Niño Guerrero); it expanded internationally through the post-2018 Venezuelan emigration wave that displaced approximately 7.5 million Venezuelans across the Western Hemisphere, with approximately 1.5 million in Peru. The 2023 Maduro-government military intervention in Tocorón dispersed the leadership and accelerated the international expansion. Tren de Aragua cells were documented in Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the United States; the principal Peruvian concentrations were Lima Metropolitan (especially the eastern conos), Trujillo, Tumbes, Tacna, and Tarapoto. The organisation's principal Peruvian activities included extortion, sicariato, prostitution rackets, contraband, and the trafficking-and-smuggling networks across the Ecuador and Chile borders.

The Peruvian Fiscalía's Tren de Aragua-related criminal proceedings — coordinated through the Fiscalía Especializada contra la Criminalidad Organizada (FECOR) — included multiple high-profile operativos through 2024–2025. The Caso Los Gallegos (a Tren de Aragua faction operating in Tumbes and Tacna), the Caso La Jauría (operating in Trujillo), and the Caso Tren del Norte (the cross-border smuggling network) produced multiple arrests and provisional detentions; conviction outcomes through the May 2025 cut-off remained limited, with most cases at the investigation or preliminary-trial phase.

The political treatment of the Tren de Aragua phenomenon was contested. The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's framing emphasised the Venezuelan-origin and transnational-organised-crime character, with consequential implications for migration policy: the Ministerio del Interior introduced enhanced biometric screening for Venezuelan migrants, the Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones increased deportation proceedings for foreign nationals with criminal records, and the bilateral coordination with Chile (across the southern frontier) intensified. Critics — IDEHPUCP, CNDDHH, the Asociación Civil Encuentros, and academic commentary from Eduardo Dargent and Paula Muñoz — argued that the Venezuelan-migrant framing risked xenophobic generalisation; that the domestic organised-crime networks (Los Pulpos, Los Compadres, the Trujillo-origin factions) were equally consequential; that the structural drivers (state-capacity weakness, post-pandemic informal-economy disruption, regional drug-trafficking reconfiguration) required structural responses; and that the emergency-decree governance pattern reproduced the structural-impunity dynamics documented in PE-D-03.

4.3 The Estado de Emergencia and Military-Police Architecture

The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's principal institutional instrument was the estado de emergencia under Article 137 of the 1993 Constitution. The first declaration covering Lima Metropolitan and Callao was DS No. 110-2024-PCM of 23 September 2024, in response to a high-profile sequence of sicariato killings and extortion-related violence in the eastern conos of Lima. The declaration suspended the constitutional rights of inviolability of the home, freedom of transit, freedom of assembly, and personal liberty in specified zones; authorised the Armed Forces to operate alongside the PNP in internal-order functions; and established the operational framework for joint patrols, operativos de saturación, and megaoperativos.

The renewal pattern through 2024–2025 — successive DS renewals at sixty-day intervals — mirrored the post-protest pattern documented in PE-D-03 and IACHR commentary as functionally permanent rather than exceptional declarations. The IACHR, the Defensoría del Pueblo, IDEHPUCP, and CNDDHH criticised the renewal pattern as institutionalising what should be exceptional; the government's response — articulated by successive Interior Ministers and by the Adrianzén PCM — was that the security conditions warranted continuous emergency coverage and that the alternative (permitting the emergency to lapse) would produce immediate violence escalation.

The military-police operational architecture under the emergency was a hybrid model. The PNP retained primary responsibility for criminal investigation and arrest; the Armed Forces (principally the Ejército del Perú) provided perimeter control, fixed-position patrols, and joint operativos in the highest-violence zones. The Comando Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas coordinated the inter-service component. The Plan de Operaciones under successive PNP commanders specified the per-zone deployment intensity, the patrol-coverage matrix, and the inter-agency liaison procedures.

The principal critiques of the architecture — articulated by IDEHPUCP, IDL, the Defensoría del Pueblo, and academic commentary — included: (i) the under-resourcing of criminal investigation (the PNP's Dirincri and the Fiscalía's investigative capacity had not been correspondingly expanded; the arrest-to-conviction ratio remained low); (ii) the structural absence of community-policing approaches; (iii) the risk of human-rights violations under militarised patrol (although the documented incidence remained meaningful below the 2022–23 protest-period pattern); (iv) the absence of structural socio-economic interventions in the highest-violence districts; and (v) the failure to address the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada legislative reform that the security architecture itself required.

4.4 The Interior-Portfolio Rotation

The Interior portfolio rotated through at least five Ministers during the Adrianzén-cabinet phase from March 2024 through the May 2025 document cut-off — a rotation pattern that itself became a political issue.

Walter Ortiz Acosta (March–May 2024). A career civilian with prior PNP-coordination experience; appointed in the post-Otárola cabinet stabilisation; resigned in May 2024 amid criticism of the early Interior response to the rising homicide pattern.

Juan José Santivañez Antúnez (May 2024 – November 2024). A lawyer with prior PNP institutional ties; his tenure was marked by repeated controversies (alleged interventions in specific investigations; criticised relationships with PNP factional groupings; opposition allegations of obstruction in the Caso Rolex-related investigations). The Congress approved a moción de censura against Santivañez on [TBD-VERIFY: 13 November 2024] with 78 votes — the first Interior Minister censured under the Boluarte Government and one of the relatively rare censuras of the post-2022 period. The censure was procedurally surprising given the broader Boluarte–Congress alliance; it was driven by a combination of opposition pressure, principled segments within the centre-right coalition, and the Adrianzén PCM's eventual non-opposition to the procedure.

Carlos Malaver Odías (November 2024 – February 2025). A retired PNP General with prior command experience; his appointment was intended to bring operational PNP credibility to the portfolio; he resigned in February 2025 amid renewed criticism of the homicide pattern's continuation despite the Lima Metropolitan emergency declaration.

Sandra Echeandía Albites (February–April 2025). A lawyer with prior Ministerio Público experience; her appointment was the first female occupant of the Interior portfolio during the Boluarte Government; she resigned in April 2025 amid a series of high-profile sicariato episodes in Trujillo and Lima.

[TBD-VERIFY: succession from late April 2025 through the May 2025 document cut-off requires verification against the most recent Decreto Supremo of nombramiento.] The pattern of Interior Minister rotation — five Ministers in fourteen months under a single PCM — is anomalous even by post-2018 Peruvian standards and was criticised as itself a structural impediment to coherent security policy.

The parallel rotation in the Comandancia General de la PNP — three successive Comandantes Generales during the same period — compounded the institutional discontinuity. Each rotation followed a public-confidence-shock episode; the pattern was characterised by IDEHPUCP and academic commentary as reactive personnel management rather than corrective institutional reform.

5. The Tribunal Constitucional, the JNJ, and the Fiscalía Contests of Q1–Q2 2025

The contest among the Tribunal Constitucional, the Junta Nacional de Justicia, the Ministerio Público (Fiscalía de la Nación), and the Congressional Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos through Q1–Q2 2025 was the material continuation of the institutional-prosecutorial dispute that PE-D-04 §6 documents through August 2024. The dispute had begun with the JNJ's 27 May 2024 Resolución removing Patricia Benavides Vargas as Fiscal de la Nación on disciplinary grounds (relating to the Caso Cuellos Blancos-derived investigations into Benavides' conduct), and had been reconfigured by the Tribunal Constitucional's 21 August 2024 Auto ordering her provisional restoration pending further proceedings. Delia Espinoza Valenzuela had assumed the Fiscal de la Nación function on a provisional basis during the Benavides suspension, but her institutional position remained contested through late 2024.

5.1 The 12 March 2025 JNJ Re-Confirmation

The JNJ's 12 March 2025 Resolución — Resolución No. [TBD-VERIFY: 095-2025-JNJ] — re-confirmed Benavides' removal on procedurally-corrected grounds. The JNJ's intervening proceedings, conducted between August 2024 and March 2025, addressed each of the procedural objections that the Tribunal Constitucional had identified in the 21 August 2024 Auto: enhanced procedural opportunity for Benavides' defence; expanded evidentiary record; explicit findings on each disciplinary charge; and reasoned ruling on the proportionality of the removal sanction. The re-confirmation was marked: Benavides was definitively removed from the Fiscal de la Nación position.

The Boluarte government and the Congressional majority's response was muted; the Adrianzén PCM did not publicly contest the JNJ ruling, although individual Congressional members from Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, and Renovación Popular criticised the re-confirmation as institutional persecution. The principal opposition response — articulated by Juntos por el Perú, the Castillo-origin left, and segments of Acción Popular — celebrated the re-confirmation as a vindication of the JNJ's institutional authority.

5.2 The 28 April 2025 TC Auto Declining Further Intervention

The Tribunal Constitucional's 28 April 2025 Auto — issued in response to a fresh acción de amparo filed by Benavides' legal team — declined to intervene a second time. The Auto, authored by [TBD-VERIFY: TC magistrate Manuel Monteagudo Valdez or alternate], held that the procedural defects the 21 August 2024 Auto had identified had been significant addressed in the intervening JNJ proceedings; that the Tribunal Constitucional's institutional role did not extend to notable review of properly-conducted JNJ disciplinary proceedings; and that the amparo remedy was therefore not available on the facts presented. The Auto was a 4-3 decision [TBD-VERIFY: vote composition]; the dissenting opinions argued that the JNJ proceedings had not adequately addressed the proportionality question and that amparo review was warranted.

The 28 April 2025 Auto effectively closed the Fiscalía-leadership question. Delia Espinoza Valenzuela assumed the Fiscal de la Nación position on a considerable (rather than provisional) basis from May 2025; her tenure is expected to extend through the JNJ-determined transitional period before a new Fiscal de la Nación designation under the standard procedure.

5.3 The Congressional Constitutional-Accusation Proceedings against TC Magistrates

In parallel with the JNJ–TC–Fiscalía contest, the Congressional Comisión de Justicia y Derechos Humanos (CJDDHH) opened constitutional-accusation proceedings against three Tribunal Constitucional magistrates for the 21 August 2024 Auto — characterised by the accusing deputies as institutional overreach amounting to constitutional violation. The named magistrates included Manuel Monteagudo Valdez and Helder Domínguez Haro; the third magistrate [TBD-VERIFY: identification of the third subject of the accusation requires verification]. The proceedings advanced into the Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales through Q1 2025 but were stalled through April 2025; the principal Congressional caucus appears reluctant to advance the accusations to the full plenary, both because the post-2026 Senate (rather than the current unicameral Congress) would be the trial venue under the new bicameral architecture, and because the political optics of removing TC magistrates over a procedural ruling are difficult.

The accusation proceedings nonetheless represent a continuing institutional pressure on the Tribunal Constitucional. IDEHPUCP, Transparencia, and the principal academic commentary have characterised the proceedings as illustrating the structural over-politicisation of the relationship among Congress, the TC, and the Fiscalía in the post-2022 institutional environment.

5.4 The Susel Paredes and Edward Málaga Investigations

The Congressional investigative proceedings against opposition deputies Susel Paredes Piqué (independent, formerly Partido Morado) and Edward Málaga Trillo (Partido Morado, independent) illustrated the parallel use of Congressional investigative procedures against opposition figures. The Paredes investigation — relating to allegations of [TBD-VERIFY: irregular use of congressional staff or vehicle assets] — was characterised by Paredes and her defenders as politically motivated, in retaliation for her sustained criticism of the Boluarte–Congress alliance and her advocacy on protest-period accountability. The Málaga investigation — relating to allegations of [TBD-VERIFY: parallel administrative-procedural matter] — was similarly characterised. Both proceedings advanced through the relevant Comisión de Ética and parallel procedures through Q1 2025 without producing definitive sanctions.

The pattern is significant analytically. The Boluarte–Congress majority had defended the Tribunal Constitucional and Fiscalía against perceived institutional overreach when those institutions had ruled in the majority's favour; it had pursued aggressive Congressional procedures against opposition deputies whose criticism of the alliance had been most sustained. The asymmetry was characterised by IDEHPUCP, Transparencia, the Wilson Center commentary, and the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos as illustrating the instrumental use of institutional procedures that has characterised the post-2022 inter-branch politics.

5.5 The Caso Rolex Continuation

The Caso Rolex against President Boluarte, opened by the Fiscalía on 18 March 2024 and advanced through the allanamiento of 22 March 2024 (documented in PE-D-04 §3), continued through 2024–2025 without producing a constitutional accusation that the Congressional majority would advance to vote. The Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales received the Fiscalía's informe and the relevant carpeta fiscal material; the Subcomisión-level proceedings advanced slowly through 2024 and Q1 2025, with the principal Congressional caucus showing no indication of advancing the accusation to the full plenary. The protective Congressional coalition continued to hold.

The Espinoza Fiscalía's stance toward the Caso Rolex through 2025 was contested in the commentary. Defenders argued that the investigation continued under the standard Fiscalía procedures; critics — IDL-Reporteros, Wayka, and segments of the academic commentary — argued that the Fiscalía-leadership reconfiguration had slowed the investigation and that the constitutional-accusation pathway had been effectively closed. The Caso Rolex is therefore likely to extend into the post-July-2026 period as an institutional-legal question rather than a politically-determinative one before the 2026 election.

6. The 2026 Candidate Field — Coalitions, Personalities, and the Fragmentation Question

The 2026 presidential candidate field is, by the analytic consensus of the principal media and academic commentary, the most fragmented in modern Peruvian electoral history. The Jurado Nacional de Elecciones' Registro de Organizaciones Políticas accepted twenty-two presidential pre-candidacies as of the May 2025 cut-off; the candidate-registration deadline of [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025] will determine the final field. The principal candidates may be grouped by ideological orientation, organisational backing, and polling trajectory.

6.1 The Right and Centre-Right

Rafael López Aliaga (Renovación Popular). Mayor of Lima Metropolitan since January 2023; a 64-year-old businessman with Opus Dei affiliations; founder of the Renovación Popular party; the principal right-wing populist candidate in the Lima-centred field. His 2021 presidential bid placed third with 11.7 per cent of first-round vote. His mayoralty has been characterised by conflicts with the metropolitan-transport union (over the Ramiro Prialé highway expansion), with the Metropolitano municipal-transit operations, and with the central government (over funding for security operations in Lima Metropolitan). His 2026 platform emphasises security-first governance, market-oriented economic policy, and traditionalist social positions (opposition to gender-identity legislation, defence of family-structure norms). Polling through Q1 2025 placed him in the 9–14 per cent range — among the highest in the field, though not approaching majority.

Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular). Fourth presidential bid (after 2011, 2016, 2021); 50-year-old daughter of former President Alberto Fujimori; the fujimorismo electoral force's continuing principal. The 2021 second round, in which she narrowly lost to Pedro Castillo (50.13% to 49.87%), and her sustained role in the post-2022 Congressional majority position her as the principal continuity candidate of the post-2016 right-wing electoral coalition. Her 2026 platform emphasises continuity with the post-2022 institutional restoration, security-first governance, market-oriented economic policy, and the rehabilitation of the fujimorismo historical record (her father had been definitively released from prison in December 2023 under the Tribunal Constitucional-ordered humanitarian release; he died on [TBD-VERIFY: 11 September 2024]). The funeral of Alberto Fujimori in September 2024 was a significant political moment, attended by Keiko, multiple post-2022 cabinet members, and a meaningful public turnout, characterised by the fujimorismo organisation as a rehabilitation moment. Polling through Q1 2025 placed Keiko in the 12–17 per cent range, with a polling ceiling of approximately 30 per cent and a polling floor of 12 per cent that has remained stable across her four presidential cycles.

Phillip Butters (new party platform). The Lima radio host with a material talk-radio audience; right-wing populist; the 2026 candidacy emerged in late 2024 through a new party platform [TBD-VERIFY: specific party name]. His platform emphasises security-first, anti-establishment, and traditionalist positions; polling through Q1 2025 placed him in the 4–8 per cent range.

Carlos Álvarez (Somos Perú). The entertainer-turned-candidate with high name recognition; his 2021 presidential bid placed in the lower-middle of the field; his 2026 bid through the Somos Perú vehicle has emphasised anti-corruption populism and security-first positioning; polling has placed him in the 5–9 per cent range.

6.2 The Centre and the Establishment

Yonhy Lescano (Acción Popular). The 2021 fourth-place finisher (with 9.1 per cent); former Congressional deputy; a 66-year-old lawyer with a centrist position; his 2026 platform emphasises institutional restoration, anti-corruption, and rural-development concerns. Polling has placed him in the 3–6 per cent range; his principal challenge is the post-2018 decline of Acción Popular as an organised electoral force.

[TBD-VERIFY: APRA candidate]. APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana) — the historically-dominant Peruvian centrist party of the twentieth century — has struggled with electoral viability since the 2019 García suicide and the post-Lava Jato collapse. The 2026 candidate selection process was underway through Q1 2025 with no front-runner; the party's polling viability as an electoral force remained an open question.

[TBD-VERIFY: PPC candidate]. The Partido Popular Cristiano — historically aligned with Acción Popular in centre-right coalitions — was conducting parallel candidate-selection processes; polling viability comparable to APRA's.

Avanza País candidate. Avanza País — the party of Hernando de Soto in 2021 — was conducting its 2026 candidate selection [TBD-VERIFY: candidate identity]; the party's organisational base in the post-2022 Congressional coalition provides some institutional capacity.

6.3 The Left and the Castillo-Origin Coalition

Verónika Mendoza (Nuevo Perú / Juntos por el Perú). Third presidential bid (after 2016 and 2021); 44-year-old former Congressional deputy from Cusco; the principal candidate of the centre-left and progressive segments. Her 2016 bid placed third with 18.7 per cent; her 2021 bid through the Juntos por el Perú vehicle placed sixth. Her 2026 platform emphasises social-policy expansion, indigenous-rights recognition, climate-policy commitment, and constitutional-reform openness. Polling through Q1 2025 placed her in the 5–9 per cent range; her principal challenge is coalitional consolidation across the fragmented Peruvian left.

Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú). Former Castillo cabinet minister (Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism, 2021–2022); his 2026 candidacy through the Juntos por el Perú vehicle [TBD-VERIFY: whether Sánchez or Mendoza secured the JpP nomination, or whether the party fielded both through different mechanisms] emphasises continuity with the Castillo-administration social-policy direction.

Vladimir Cerrón (Perú Libre, fugitive status). The founder of Perú Libre and the principal ideological leader of the Castillo electoral coalition; he has been in fugitive status from Peru since October 2023, when his preliminary-detention order was issued in connection with the Caso Antalsis. The question of whether he can be a registered presidential candidate from abroad — under the Ley Orgánica de Elecciones and the JNE's interpretation — remained unresolved as of May 2025. The JNE has signalled in informal commentary that the registration would be unlikely to succeed; Perú Libre's response — whether to field an alternative candidate (Pedro Castillo from prison being the alternative ideological choice, although Castillo's own legal status raises parallel registration questions) or to field a substitute Cerrón-aligned figure — was the principal organisational question for Perú Libre through Q1–Q2 2025.

Antauro Humala (ANTAURO / Etnocacerista). The 62-year-old brother of former President Ollanta Humala; released from prison in August 2022 after serving 17 years for the 2005 Andahuaylazo (the armed-uprising attempt in which four police officers were killed); founder of the Etnocacerista movement combining ethnic nationalism, anti-establishment populism, and military-veteran political organisation. His 2026 candidacy through the ANTAURO Patriot Party (registered after his prison release) is the principal vehicle for ethnic-nationalist mobilisation in the southern Andean regions. Polling through Q1 2025 placed him in the 6–11 per cent range — among the highest in the field, reflecting a marked protest-vote and Andean-rural appeal. His candidacy is politically anomalous: a convicted insurgency leader running as a major-party presidential candidate, with significant popular support, illustrates the post-2022 institutional fragmentation in particularly sharp form.

6.4 The Independents and the Disqualification Questions

Daniel Urresti (independent / new party). Former Interior Minister under President Humala; 2021 second-place finisher in the Lima mayoralty (losing to López Aliaga); his 2026 candidacy is structurally constrained by the [TBD-VERIFY: 2024 conviction in the Caso Bustíos relating to the 1988 killing of journalist Hugo Bustíos during the internal-armed-conflict period; the conviction is under appeal]. The electoral-disqualification question for Urresti is one of several similar questions affecting the field.

Other candidates. The remaining pre-candidates registered with the JNE through May 2025 represented a range of micro-parties, single-issue platforms, and personal-vehicle candidacies. None polled above 3 per cent.

6.5 The Fragmentation Question and the Second-Round Scenario

The structural fact of the 2026 field is fragmentation. The polling-leader range of 12–17 per cent (Keiko Fujimori), the second-tier range of 8–14 per cent (López Aliaga, Antauro Humala), and the third-tier range of 4–9 per cent (Mendoza, Lescano, Butters, Álvarez, Sánchez) describes a field in which the first-round outcome is genuinely uncertain. The 2021 first round — won by Pedro Castillo with 18.9 per cent and Keiko Fujimori with 13.4 per cent qualifying for the second round — was the most-fragmented first round in Peruvian electoral history; the 2026 field may exceed that fragmentation.

The second-round scenarios, in the analytic consensus of La República, El Comercio, Wilson Center, and the principal academic commentary, are multiple and unstable. The principal second-round scenario as of May 2025 places Keiko Fujimori against either Antauro Humala, López Aliaga, or Verónika Mendoza (each scenario presenting different left-right alignments). The "would-not-vote-for" rejection ratings constrain the second-round outcomes: Keiko Fujimori's 50+ per cent rejection ceiling has structured her three prior second-round losses (2011, 2016, 2021); Antauro Humala's 60+ per cent rejection ceiling would constrain a left-right second round against any centrist or centre-right candidate; López Aliaga's Lima-centred profile constrains his Andean-rural reach; Mendoza's left-coalitional dependence constrains her business-establishment reach. The most-likely structural outcome, in the academic commentary's analytic frame, is a second round between two candidates each polling below 30 per cent of first-round vote — producing a President with the lowest first-round vote share since the 2001 Toledo-Flores second round.

The implications for governability are direct. A President elected with a low first-round vote share, governing under the restored bicameral framework with no party holding more than approximately 20 per cent of Senate or Chamber seats, will face the same coalition-construction problem that has defined every post-2016 Peruvian presidency. Whether the bicameral framework facilitates or impedes coalition construction is, as section 3.3 noted, genuinely undetermined.

7. The Macroeconomic and Mining Architecture — Recovery, Chancay, and the Trump-2 Tariff Exposure

The macroeconomic record of the 2024–2025 period is the Boluarte–Adrianzén government's principal achievement-claim. The recovery from the 2023 contraction has been sustained; inflation has remained within target; the monetary-policy easing cycle has supported credit recovery; and the Chancay Megaport inauguration has provided the medium-term investment narrative. The structural critiques — of cyclicality rather than productivity-improvement, of informal-sector persistence, of the Trump-2 tariff exposure — qualify but do not displace the recovery claim.

7.1 GDP, Inflation, and the BCRP Monetary Cycle

INEI's Producto Bruto Interno Trimestral recorded 2024 GDP growth of 3.1 per cent, following the 2023 contraction of 0.55 per cent (which had been the first non-pandemic contraction since 1998). The sectoral composition of the 2024 recovery was led by mining (expanding 3.7 per cent on the back of the Las Bambas operating normalisation and the Antamina copper-production cycle), fishing (with a strong anchovy season), agriculture (recovering from the early-2023 El Niño coastal disruption), and services. Construction remained weak through 2024 reflecting the still-depressed public-investment cycle. Manufacturing recovered modestly. The Q1 2025 GDP — published by INEI in May 2025 — recorded [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 3.4 per cent year-on-year growth].

Inflation declined from the 2023 peak of 8.66 per cent year-on-year (March 2023) to within the BCRP's 1–3 per cent target band by August 2024. The 2024 average annual inflation was approximately 2.4 per cent; Q1 2025 inflation hovered around the target midpoint of 2.0 per cent. The BCRP's Reporte de Inflación of March 2025 projected end-2025 inflation at 2.0–2.2 per cent.

The BCRP under Governor Julio Velarde Flores (continuously in post since 2006 — the longest-serving central bank governor in Latin America) executed a steady disinflation cycle. The reference rate peaked at 7.75 per cent in September 2023; the BCRP implemented nineteen consecutive 25-basis-point reductions through April 2025, bringing the rate to 4.25 per cent. [TBD-VERIFY: precise rate trajectory through May 2025; whether the BCRP held at 4.25 per cent or implemented further cuts at the April or May 2025 meetings.] The cycle was characterised by Velarde and by the BCRP Programa Monetario communications as a textbook disinflation episode achieved without recession, supported by the credibility-and-anchored-expectations conditions that the BCRP had built over the prior fifteen years.

The sol–dollar exchange rate remained within the PEN 3.65–PEN 3.80 range through 2024 and Q1 2025; the Trump-2 tariff announcement of 2 April 2025 produced a temporary depreciation to [TBD-VERIFY: PEN 3.82–3.85] before the rate stabilised. The fiscal accounts under the MEF's Marco Macroeconómico Multianual 2025–2028 showed a 2024 fiscal deficit of approximately [TBD-VERIFY: 2.8 per cent of GDP], with projection of decline to 2.0 per cent by 2027.

7.2 Mining, Las Bambas, and the Copper Sector

Mining remains the structural core of the Peruvian economy. The sector accounts for approximately 60 per cent of merchandise exports; copper alone accounts for approximately 30 per cent of total exports. The 2024 mining performance reflected the partial normalisation of the operating environment in the Apurímac–Cusco corridor (Las Bambas) and the expansion phases at Antamina (Áncash) and Cerro Verde (Arequipa). Production volumes recovered toward pre-pandemic levels though without exceeding them.

Las Bambas (MMG-operated, Apurímac province of Cotabambas). The principal copper-producing operation in the Apurímac-Cusco corridor; recurring community-relations conflict has constrained production through the 2017–2024 period. The 2024 operating environment was the most-stable since 2018, reflecting the post-2023 community-agreement framework and the reduced protest-related blockades on the corredor minero del sur. The 2025 production target was [TBD-VERIFY: 330,000–350,000 metric tons of copper concentrate]; actual Q1 2025 output reportedly approached the target.

Espinar (Glencore-operated, Cusco). Continued community-relations conflict; episodic blockades and protest activity through 2024 with the Comunidades del Distrito de Espinar requesting renegotiation of the operating-framework agreement. The Defensoría del Pueblo's Reporte Mensual de Conflictos Sociales documented Espinar as the highest-priority active mining conflict through 2024–2025.

Tía María (Southern Copper-operated, Arequipa). The project remained in pre-development status through 2024–2025 with continued community opposition; the company's development-decision deadline was extended.

Antamina (BHP-Glencore consortium, Áncash). Expansion phase planning advanced through 2024; the company's Plan de Cierre Progresivo was filed with the Ministerio de Energía y Minas in [TBD-VERIFY: mid-2024].

Cerro Verde (Freeport-operated, Arequipa). Phase expansion ongoing; production continued at high levels.

The copper price through 2024–2025 was supported by long-term electrification demand (electric-vehicle and grid-renewable production) and by the gradual reduction in Chinese inventory drawdown. The London Metal Exchange copper price averaged approximately [TBD-VERIFY: US$9,200–9,500 per tonne] through 2024; Q1 2025 prices saw a brief Trump-2-tariff-induced volatility before stabilising. The fiscal revenue from mining royalties and corporate income tax supported the MEF's fiscal-deficit decline trajectory.

7.3 The Chancay Megaport

The COSCO Shipping Ports Chancay Megaport — inaugurated on 14 November 2024 at Chancay, 80 kilometres north of Lima, by Presidents Xi Jinping and Dina Boluarte during the APEC 2024 summit — is the principal infrastructure event of the Boluarte period and arguably the most-consequential single infrastructure project in Peru since the 1990s-era highway concessions. The project, with a US$3.6 billion total investment in its first phase, comprises four berths, automated container-handling systems, and a planned rail-and-road connection to the inland Peruvian and Brazilian markets. The phase-one capacity is approximately 1 million TEU annually; long-term capacity (after subsequent phases) is projected at 3.5 million TEU.

The strategic significance is multiple. First, Chancay is the first deep-water port on the Pacific coast of South America capable of handling the largest container vessels (post-Panamax and ultra-large container ships); the prior Peruvian, Chilean, and Ecuadorian ports could not. Second, the COSCO operating concession (with the relevant arrangements with the Autoridad Portuaria Nacional) is the first major Chinese-operated port concession on the South American Pacific coast, with implications for trans-Pacific shipping patterns, for Sino-Peruvian and Sino-Latin American trade flows, and for US strategic perceptions. Third, the integration of Chancay into the trans-Andean trade corridor — through planned rail or road connections to Brazil, Bolivia, and the Atlantic coast — would create a new Pacific-Atlantic continental shipping route bypassing the Panama Canal.

The early-operating-period throughput data through Q1 2025 reportedly showed [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 60,000–80,000 TEU in the first operating quarter]. The Peruvian commentary on Chancay has been broadly positive across the political spectrum; critics have raised concerns about the labour-relations framework, the environmental-mitigation arrangements (concerning Chancay's marine-biodiversity zone), and the strategic implications of Chinese operational control. The US response — including under the Biden administration's late-period coordination and under the Trump-2 administration's early-period commentary — has been cautious and has not produced operational interference.

7.4 The Trump-2 Tariff Exposure

The Trump-2 inauguration (20 January 2025) and the "Liberation Day" tariff regime of 2 April 2025 introduced significant new pressures on the Peruvian export profile. The 10 per cent across-the-board tariff applied to all Peruvian exports to the United States; the country-specific surcharge analysis applied to Peru produced an effective tariff of [TBD-VERIFY: 10 per cent without country surcharge; certain product categories subject to additional tariffs]. The principal affected sectors were:

Copper. The principal Peruvian export; the tariff increase affects approximately US$3–4 billion in annual exports. The principal mitigating factor is that Chinese demand and the global copper-supply tightness limit the price impact; the structural shift would be toward direct-to-China shipping (facilitated by Chancay).

Asparagus, blueberries, and other agro-exports. The non-traditional agricultural export sector — concentrated in Ica, La Libertad, Lambayeque, and Piura — is highly exposed to the US market; the tariff increase represents a direct competitiveness challenge against Mexican and Chilean competitors (subject to different tariff structures). The agro-export sector's response, coordinated through the Asociación de Gremios Productores Agrarios del Perú (AGAP) and the Sociedad Nacional de Industrias (SNI), advocated through MINCETUR for bilateral negotiation.

Textiles and apparel. Concentrated in Lima, Arequipa, and Junín; the post-USFTA expansion of the sector through 2009–2020 had been notable driven by US-market access; the tariff increase represents a structural challenge.

The MEF's August 2025 Actualización del Marco Macroeconómico Multianual [TBD-VERIFY: revised the 2025 GDP projection down by approximately 0.2–0.4 percentage points] reflecting the tariff exposure. The political-economic implication is that the macroeconomic recovery narrative — the Boluarte–Adrianzén government's principal achievement claim — is at risk of partial reversal in the pre-electoral window. The candidates' positioning on the tariff response — bilateral negotiation, WTO challenge, market diversification — has been an emergent dimension of the 2026 campaign.

8. The Foreign-Policy Architecture — APEC 2024, China, the United States, and the Regional Setting

The foreign-policy architecture of the 2024–2025 period reflects four threads: the APEC 2024 hosting; the consolidation of the China relationship through Chancay and the broader trade-and-investment portfolio; the Trump-2 transition and the new US bilateral pressures; and the strained-but-stable regional architecture. Each thread merits analysis.

8.1 APEC 2024 and the Lima Summit

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting (Lima, 14–16 November 2024) was the largest international event hosted by Peru in over a decade — Peru's third APEC hosting (after 2008 and 2016) and the principal foreign-policy success of the Boluarte–Adrianzén government. The summit produced the Lima Declaration on AI and Trade Governance, a framework document addressing AI-related trade and investment governance, supply-chain resilience, and the WTO reform agenda.

The principal bilateral and trilateral interactions during the summit included: the Xi Jinping–Joe Biden trilateral meeting of 16 November 2024 (their last as sitting presidents; Trump's election had been confirmed on 5 November 2024, two weeks earlier; the meeting addressed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl precursors, and the Russia–Ukraine war); the Xi–Boluarte bilateral meeting alongside the Chancay inauguration; the Biden–Boluarte bilateral; and multiple sub-trilateral and bilateral meetings among the other APEC heads of state. The summit's organisational delivery was characterised by international media as competent and orderly, providing the Boluarte government with a considerable foreign-policy achievement to claim.

8.2 The China Relationship

The China relationship strengthened materially through the 2024–2025 period. The Chancay Megaport inauguration on 14 November 2024 was the principal symbolic and operational event; the broader trade-and-investment portfolio includes the Las Bambas operating concession (MMG, with significant Chinese state-enterprise participation), the Toromocho copper operation (Chinalco), multiple smaller mining operations, the post-2020 Chinese vaccine-cooperation legacy, and the China–Peru FTA architecture (in force since 2010). Peruvian merchandise exports to China consolidated as the largest national destination, exceeding 30 per cent of total merchandise exports through 2024.

The Xi–Boluarte bilateral framework during the November 2024 summit included signed memoranda on infrastructure cooperation, agricultural-export expansion, and the planned trans-Andean rail-corridor pre-feasibility study. The framework signalled a continuing Chinese strategic interest in the Peruvian economy and infrastructure that the US response had not displaced.

8.3 The United States and the Trump-2 Transition

The US relationship through the Biden-administration period (through January 2025) was characterised by continuing bilateral cooperation, USAID program engagement, and the post-2023 normalisation following the protest-period tensions. The Biden administration had largely avoided public commentary on the protest-period accountability and on the Caso Rolex, prioritising the operational bilateral relationship.

The Trump-2 transition (20 January 2025) introduced significant new pressures. The "Liberation Day" tariff regime of 2 April 2025 (section 7.4) was the principal economic instrument. The parallel USAID program cuts (the executive order suspending USAID disbursements pending program-by-program review, issued in late January 2025) disrupted the long-standing US-Peru cooperation portfolio in counter-narcotics (the Devida programme), governance support, and bilateral health and education cooperation. The Embassy of the United States in Lima continued operations under the Trump-2 reorganisation; ambassadorial appointments and senior-level engagement were in flux through Q1–Q2 2025.

The Peruvian government's response to the Trump-2 pressures, coordinated through the Cancillería (under Foreign Minister [TBD-VERIFY: name of the Foreign Minister as of May 2025]), the MEF, and MINCETUR, has been characterised by selective engagement rather than confrontational positioning. The strategic calculation, articulated in informal Cancillería commentary, has been to preserve the broader bilateral architecture while seeking tariff relief through the standard bilateral channels and through the WTO consultation framework.

8.4 The Regional Setting

The regional relations with Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Bolivia were characterised by attenuated but stable engagement. Brazil (under the Lula government, third term since January 2023) — the relationship was strained by Lula's critical positioning on the protest-period casualties and on the post-2022 institutional trajectory, though bilateral cooperation on trade, energy, and the Amazon environmental framework continued. Colombia (under the Petro government since August 2022) — similarly strained relations on the protest-period and institutional questions; the Pacific Alliance institutional structure continued in attenuated form, with Mexican-led coordination after the 2023 Mexican pro-tempore presidency. Mexico (under the AMLO government to October 2024, then under the Sheinbaum government from October 2024) — the diplomatic rupture initiated in December 2022 (over the Lilia Paredes asylum) had not been reversed as of May 2025; the Sheinbaum transition had not produced an opening on the question. Bolivia — the relations with the post-2020 MAS-government period (initially Arce, with the late-2024 succession dynamics) were stable; the bilateral coordination on the trans-Andean trade corridor and on the Lake Titicaca shared-water-resources framework continued.

The border tensions with Ecuador (over the post-1998 Brasilia Presidential Act border, which remains stable) and with Chile (over the post-2014 ICJ maritime delimitation, which is settled) were not active issues. The Venezuelan-migration question — with Peru hosting approximately 1.5 million Venezuelans, the second-largest concentration in Latin America after Colombia — remained a structural concern with implications for the security crisis (section 4) and the regional-political setting.

9. Three-Account Reading — Stability, Legitimacy Deficit, and Structural Permanent Crisis

The historiographical and analytical commentary on the 2024–2025 pre-electoral period has crystallised, as the Key Takeaways anticipate, around three concurrent accounts. This document organises its meaningful reading under the three-account framework not because the accounts are mutually exclusive but because each captures empirical and analytic dimensions the others do not. The corpus does not arbitrate among them; each can be tested against the post-2026 institutional outcomes.

9.1 The "Stability-with-Bicameralism" Account

The Boluarte–Adrianzén–Congress account — held by the government, the principal Congressional bloc, segments of the Lima business establishment, the Wilson Center and Inter-American Dialogue mainstream commentary, and selected academic interpretation (Pedro Cateriano, Lourdes Flores Nano) — emphasises five claims.

First, constitutional continuity: Peru avoided the constitutional collapse that the 7 December 2022 Castillo auto-coup had threatened; the institutional architecture of the 1993 Constitution functioned to contain the crisis; the vacancia of Castillo and the Boluarte succession followed constitutional procedure; the subsequent governance under Boluarte–Otárola and Boluarte–Adrianzén maintained constitutional continuity through difficult conditions.

Second, protest cycle containment: the December 2022 – April 2023 protest cycle, despite the casualty record documented in PE-D-03, did not produce broader-scale violence; the security architecture (whatever its human-rights deficiencies) prevented an escalation to civil-conflict conditions; the post-April-2023 period has seen no comparable protest cycle.

Third, macroeconomic recovery: the BCRP-led disinflation cycle achieved without recession, the 2024 GDP growth recovery, the maintained low sol-dollar exchange-rate volatility, and the broader fiscal stability represent a genuine policy achievement under difficult conditions.

Fourth, institutional reform: Ley No. 32101 is the most-material constitutional reform since 1993; it restores the pre-1993 Peruvian bicameral tradition; it was procedurally regular under Article 206; it provides the post-2026 Congress with a deliberative-review layer that the unicameral framework lacked.

Fifth, electoral discharge: the 12 April 2026 election is the institutional event that will discharge the post-2022 institutional debt; the orderly transition to a new President and a new bicameral Congress will close the post-Castillo period and open a new institutional cycle.

The account's analytic strength is the empirical record on constitutional continuity, on the macroeconomic stabilisation, and on the bicameralism reform's marked content. Its principal vulnerability is the legitimacy-deficit account's empirical record on protest casualties, the Caso Rolex, and the systematic single-digit polling approval of both Boluarte and the Congress over the period.

9.2 The "Auto-Golpe-Democracy and Criminalisation" Account

The civil-society and opposition account — held by IACHR, CNDDHH, IDEHPUCP, the Andean rural and indigenous opposition, the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos, much academic-Peruvian commentary (Vergara in his critical mode; Meléndez; Muñoz), and the protestadores coalition — emphasises five claims.

First, electoral-mandate deficit: the Boluarte government has governed for the entire period without an electoral mandate; her sustained 3–8 per cent approval rating across two and a half years reflects the depth of the legitimacy deficit; the Congressional bloc supporting her, with its own 3–7 per cent approval, compounds the deficit; the mutual-low-approval-mutual-survival pattern is constitutionally novel and democratically anomalous.

Second, protest casualty impunity: the December 2022 – April 2023 protest cycle's casualty record (49+ deaths per the Defensoría del Pueblo; 60+ per the IACHR and Amnesty) has produced no significant criminal accountability through May 2025; the institutional-investigation framework (Fiscalía carpetas; PNP Inspectoría; the Comisión Investigadora del Congreso) has not produced final charges against the principal command-line for the Juliaca, Ayacucho, or Andahuaylas events; the Inter-American case-flow is the principal pending accountability mechanism.

Third, the Caso Rolex and personal-enrichment patterns: the Caso Rolex (PE-D-04 §3) reflects systemic personal-enrichment patterns; the protective Congressional coalition's refusal to advance the constitutional accusation despite the Fiscalía's significant informe illustrates the acuerdos políticos (political accommodation) pattern that has corroded the post-2018 anti-corruption architecture.

Fourth, prosecutorial-architecture manipulation: the Patricia Benavides–Tribunal Constitucional dispute (PE-D-04 §6 and section 5 above) reflects the institutional manipulation of the prosecutorial architecture; the Congressional constitutional-accusation proceedings against TC magistrates illustrate the same pattern; the parallel proceedings against opposition deputies (Paredes, Málaga) illustrate the instrumental use of institutional procedures.

Fifth, bicameralism as self-protection: Ley No. 32101 — whatever its notable merit — was advanced by a coalition with single-digit public approval, expanded the institutional architecture of the same coalition, restored re-election rights that the same coalition will benefit from, and was passed without a referendum despite the magnitude of the modification. The Reform's defenders' historical-continuity argument (the pre-1993 bicameral tradition) is held to be technically correct but politically tendentious in the immediate timing.

The account's analytic strength is the empirical record on the polling-approval gap, on the protest-accountability deficit, on the Caso Rolex procedural pattern, and on the asymmetric use of Congressional procedures. Its principal vulnerability is the structural account's observation that the proximate phenomena (low approval, accountability deficit, prosecutorial contests) are themselves manifestations of deeper post-2000 institutional dynamics that pre-date the Boluarte government.

9.3 The "Post-2016 Permanent Crisis with Restored Bicameral Architecture" Account

The structural account — held by Vergara in his analytic mode, Levitsky, Meléndez, Muñoz, Dargent, Cynthia McClintock, and the long-arc historiographical tradition — emphasises five claims.

First, the Boluarte period as manifestation rather than cause: the structural variables — post-Fujimori party-system fragmentation, the unicameral Congress's mismatch with the presidential system, the Lima–Andean cleavage, the corruption-prosecution-architecture instability, the state-capacity weakness — pre-date the Boluarte government and would condition any post-2022 presidency. The Boluarte period is a manifestation of these structural variables rather than their cause; the proximate political phenomena (low approval, accountability deficits, prosecutorial contests) are downstream of the structural variables.

Second, the bicameralism reform as ambivalent: Ley No. 32101 may produce structural institutional benefits over a longer horizon — by introducing a deliberative-review layer, by encouraging national-rather-than-departmental political coordination, by providing a more articulated coalition-construction architecture — while the immediate political logic is genuinely self-protective. The two readings are not mutually exclusive; the structural account holds both simultaneously. The empirical test will be the post-2026 Congress's governance pattern under the new framework.

Third, the security crisis as state-capacity weakness compounded by transnational expansion: the 2024–2025 homicide crisis reflects structural state-capacity weakness (the PNP's investigative under-resourcing; the Fiscalía's case-processing constraints; the absence of community-policing approaches) compounded by transnational organised-crime expansion (the Tren de Aragua trajectory; the regional drug-trafficking reconfiguration). The crisis is not primarily a Boluarte-government failure; it would be a critical pressure on any post-2022 government; the structural response would require multi-year institutional reform rather than emergency-decree governance.

Fourth, the 2026 election as continuation rather than rupture: the fragmented candidate field, the low polling-leader range, the second-round uncertainty, and the post-election coalition-construction challenge reproduce the pattern of every post-2016 Peruvian election. The 2026 election will likely produce a President with limited first-round mandate facing a fragmented Congress; the bicameral framework will be tested under these conditions. The structural account expects continuity with the post-2016 pattern, modified by the new institutional architecture but not transformed by it.

Fifth, the long-arc historiographical question: whether the post-2000 Peruvian institutional period — characterised by eleven presidents in twenty-five years, by mass protest cycles, by recurring corruption-prosecution episodes, by Lima–Andean cleavage politics — represents a transitional period heading toward a more-stable equilibrium or represents the modal Peruvian governance pattern of the early twenty-first century. The structural account treats this question as genuinely open; the 2026 election and the post-2026 governance will provide partial evidence but not definitive resolution.

The account's analytic strength is the long-arc institutional reading and the comparative-Latin-American framing. Its principal vulnerability is the relative absence of normative judgment on the protest-casualty record and on the Caso Rolex — the structural account's tendency toward analytic neutrality on these questions is, by the civil-society account's standards, itself a normative position.

9.4 The Three Accounts in Combination

The three accounts are best read as complementary rather than competing. The stability account captures the empirical record on constitutional continuity, macroeconomic recovery, and the bicameralism reform's considerable content. The legitimacy-deficit account captures the empirical record on the polling-approval gap, protest-accountability impunity, and the asymmetric use of institutional procedures. The structural account captures the long-arc institutional patterns and the comparative-Latin-American framing.

The 2026 election will provide partial empirical tests for each account. A successful first round with high turnout, an orderly second round, and an orderly transition to the new President and the bicameral Congress would partially validate the stability account. Persistent low post-election approval, continued protest-accountability deficit, and continued prosecutorial-architecture instability would partially validate the legitimacy-deficit account. Continued fragmentation, continued minority-presidency-and-Congressional-conflict patterns under the bicameral framework, and continued security-crisis pressure would partially validate the structural account.

The corpus's analytical position — consistent with the tone-calibration guidance in the parent CLAUDE.md — is that each account is internally consistent, that each captures dimensions the others do not, and that the post-2026 record will provide the empirical evidence to weight the accounts. The principal historiographical risk is the temptation to resolve the three-account complexity into a single account; the corpus resists that temptation in favour of preserving the analytic plurality.

10. The Forward View — Open Questions and the Post-2026 Institutional Trajectory

The 2025 pre-election year closes the period this document covers; the next twelve months — to the 12 April 2026 election and the 28 July 2026 inauguration of the new President and the new bicameral Congress — will reshape the institutional environment. Five open questions structure the forward view; the responses will define the post-Boluarte period.

10.1 Whether the Boluarte Government Completes Its Constitutional Term

The first open question is whether the Boluarte government completes its constitutional term to 28 July 2026 or whether a further institutional rupture intervenes. The vacancia threshold remains 87 of 130 deputies under the still-unicameral pre-2026 Congress; the post-March-2024 Congressional configuration has shown no indication of crossing it. The protective Congressional coalition's reasons for continuing the alliance — collective bargaining position on the bicameralism reform, the Reform's re-election restoration benefiting the same coalition, the security-crisis governance shared incentive — remain in place through the pre-election year. The principal scenarios that would produce a vacancia vote include: a major new disclosure on the Caso Rolex or a parallel corruption case implicating the Adrianzén PCM; a major escalation of the security crisis producing immediate Congressional-coalition repositioning; a major protest cycle reproducing the post-7-December-2022 pattern; or a Tribunal Constitucional or Inter-American ruling producing immediate institutional pressure. None of these scenarios is high-probability through the pre-election window; the structural-modal expectation is that Boluarte completes the term.

10.2 Whether the 2026 First Round Produces a Meaningful Second-Round Contest

The second open question is whether the 2026 first round produces a candidate with sufficient national reach for a meaningful second-round contest, or whether the field's fragmentation produces a Castillo-2021-pattern outcome (the 2021 second round was between candidates with 19 per cent and 13 per cent of first-round vote). The structural-modal expectation, based on the May 2025 polling configuration, is a first round with the leader at 15–20 per cent and the runner-up at 10–14 per cent — comparable to or more fragmented than the 2021 first round. The second-round scenarios (section 6.5) produce multiple plausible configurations, none of which would produce a President with strong first-round mandate. The structural implication is that the post-2026 President will face the same coalition-construction problem that has defined every post-2016 Peruvian presidency, modified by the bicameral framework.

10.3 Whether the Post-2026 Bicameral Congress Sustains Governing Coalitions

The third open question is whether the post-2026 Congress under the restored bicameral framework can sustain a governing coalition for a full presidential term — something no Peruvian President has achieved since 2011. The bicameral framework's effect on coalition-construction is, as section 3.3 noted, genuinely undetermined. The optimistic reading — held by the Reform's defenders — is that the deliberative-review layer slows down legislative production, encourages national-rather-than-departmental coordination, and provides more institutional positions for coalition bargaining. The pessimistic reading — held by some of the Reform's critics — is that the bicameral framework provides more veto points, accelerates fragmentation by creating more institutional positions to contest, and reproduces the unicameral-era pattern of minority-presidency-and-perpetual-Congressional-conflict in modified form. The empirical test will be the post-2026 Congress's first two years.

10.4 Whether the Protest-Period Accountability Framework Produces Formal Accountability

The fourth open question is whether the December 2022 – April 2023 protest-period accountability framework — the IACHR individual-petition case-flow, the anticipated Inter-American Court case-flow, the domestic Fiscalía investigations, and the parallel civil-society and academic-historiographical documentation — produces formal accountability or settles into the structural-impunity pattern of prior Peruvian mass-casualty episodes. The principal comparator is the 2009 Bagua / Baguazo trajectory, in which the structural-impunity pattern was the dominant outcome despite extensive documentation. The IACHR's continuing engagement and the anticipated Inter-American Court case-flow through 2025–2027 represent the principal external-institutional pressure; the domestic prosecutorial framework's capacity to produce formal accountability remains constrained by the institutional and political variables documented in PE-D-03 and PE-J-03.

10.5 Whether the Security Crisis Comes Under Structural Control

The fifth open question is whether the 2024–2025 security crisis can be brought under structural — rather than emergency-decree — institutional control. The structural responses would include: the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada legislative reform; meaningful PNP investigative-capacity expansion; Fiscalía case-processing capacity expansion; community-policing institutional development; transnational coordination on Tren de Aragua and parallel networks; and structural socio-economic interventions in the highest-violence districts. None of these structural responses can be delivered in the pre-election window; the post-2026 administration will inherit the security crisis with the institutional architecture of the pre-2026 period largely unchanged. The risk is that the security crisis becomes a permanent feature of the Peruvian governance environment, with implications for civic-political life, economic activity, and migration patterns.

10.6 The Composite Forward View

The composite forward view, in the analytic consensus that emerges from the three-account discipline, is that the 2026 election will likely produce constitutional continuity but not institutional rupture; that the post-2026 administration will face the same structural variables that have defined the post-2016 period, modified by the bicameral architecture; that the protest-accountability and security-crisis questions will extend into the post-2026 period as continuing pressures; and that the long-arc historiographical question — whether the post-2000 Peruvian institutional period is transitional or modal — will remain open. The 2026 election will be the institutional event that closes the post-Castillo period and opens the post-Boluarte period; it will not, on the structural-account's reading, resolve the deeper post-Fujimori institutional questions.

11. Conclusion — The Spiral Index and the Post-Castillo Closure

The 2025 pre-election year is the test year of the post-2022 institutional configuration. The Boluarte–Adrianzén–Congress alliance has demonstrated structural durability through fourteen consecutive months of the Adrianzén PCM, through the Caso Rolex fallout, through the bicameralism reform, through the security crisis, through the Fiscalía contests, and through the Trump-2 transition. The restored bicameral architecture — Ley No. 32101 of 28 November 2024 — represents the most-material institutional modification of the 1993 Constitution. The 2024–2025 security crisis has displaced the post-2022 protest-accountability question as the dominant public concern. The 2026 candidate field is the most-fragmented in modern Peruvian electoral history. The macroeconomic recovery has been delivered against the Trump-2 tariff exposure.

The three-account framework — stability-with-bicameralism, legitimacy-deficit, structural permanent crisis — captures the analytical plurality of the period. Each account is internally consistent; each captures dimensions the others do not; the corpus does not arbitrate among them. The 2026 election will provide partial empirical tests; the post-2026 governance will provide more.

The principal historiographical observation — held across the three accounts — is that the 2025 pre-election year is transitional in a structurally significant way. The institutional architecture of the next political generation is being constructed in the pre-electoral window: the bicameral framework, the post-2026 candidate field, the security-architecture institutional pattern, the prosecutorial-architecture configuration. The choices made now will define the post-Boluarte period. The corpus's role is to document the construction with analytical precision, with the three-account discipline, and with the TBD-VERIFY transparency that preserves the research record for future closure.

Spiral Index — Cross-References within the Peru Corpus

PE-A-01: Fujimori First Presidency (1990–2000) — the constitutional-architecture predecessor; the 1993 unicameral Congress Ley No. 32101 reverses; the fujimorismo electoral force whose 2026 expression in the Keiko Fujimori candidacy is the principal continuity. Section 3 and section 6.1 carry the cross-reference.
PE-A-02: 2000 Fujimori Collapse and the Paniagua Transitional Government — the post-Fujimori instability frame within which the 2026 election sits; the long-arc institutional comparator. Section 9.3 carries the cross-reference.
PE-B-01: Humala and Kuczynski Presidencies (2011–2018) — the prior centre-left/centre-right cycle; the institutional-template comparator; the last Peruvian president to complete a full term (Humala, to July 2016). Section 10.3 carries the cross-reference.
PE-D-01: Toledo–García Presidencies (2001–2011) — the longer-arc post-Fujimori comparator; the prior institutional reform-and-consolidation cycle. Section 9.3 carries the cross-reference.
PE-D-02: 7 December 2022 Castillo Auto-Coup Attempt and Removal — the institutional-rupture event whose three-year aftermath the 2026 election will test. Section 1, section 5, and section 9 carry the cross-reference.
PE-D-03: December 2022 – 2023 Boluarte-Era Protests — protest-cycle backdrop; the casualty record that conditions the 2026 electoral legitimacy debate; the prior Bagua / Baguazo comparator for the structural-impunity question. Section 9.2 and section 10.4 carry the cross-reference.
PE-D-04: Boluarte Government 2023–2025 — direct predecessor; the cabinet, Caso Rolex, macroeconomic, and pre-election baseline this document continues. Section 2, section 5.5, and the Caso Rolex references throughout carry the cross-reference.
PE-J-03: December 2022 – 2023 Protest Casualties — contested-record companion; the dedicated J-block treatment of the casualty record. Section 9.2 and section 10.4 carry the cross-reference.
PE-J-04: Lava Jato Implications for Peruvian Politics — corruption-prosecution-architecture companion; the long-arc framework for the Caso Rolex and the Fiscalía contests. Section 5 carries the cross-reference.
PE-K-01: 1993 Constitution and Fujimori Autogolpe Aftermath (1992–2000) — constitutional-architecture predecessor; the Articles 90, 113.2, 117, 134, 137 and the bicameral structures restored by Ley No. 32101. Section 3 carries the cross-reference.
PE-O-01: Presidential-Instability Trajectory and Possible Constitutional Reform — structural-reading frame doc; the long-arc institutional-instability framework. Section 9.3 and section 10.6 carry the cross-reference.
PE-R-01: Peru Governance Books Canon — source-canon parent; the authoritative source-canon framework for the document.

The corpus's structural reading is that the post-Castillo period — extending from the 7 December 2022 autogolpe through the 28 July 2026 inauguration of the new President and the new bicameral Congress — is the most-consequential single political period in Peru since the 2000 Fujimori collapse. The institutional architecture of the next political generation is being shaped now. The corpus's role is to preserve the analytical record with the precision, the plurality, and the transparency that the post-Castillo Peruvian political moment requires.

12. Postscript (Added 2026-08-29) — Boluarte's Removal and the Two Interim Presidencies Not Anticipated by §§1–11

Sections 1–11 above, drafted in May 2025, treat Dina Boluarte as the sitting President who will preside continuously through the 12 April 2026 first round to the 28 July 2026 inauguration, and repeatedly frame the vacancia threshold as unlikely to be crossed "absent a further institutional rupture" (§1, §10, §11). That institutional rupture occurred. Verified reporting (evidence tier: search-retrieved, cross-corroborated across independent outlets; WebFetch to primary sources remains blocked in this session) establishes that Boluarte was removed by Congress on 10 October 2025 — roughly five months after this document's cut-off — and that Peru had two further presidencies (José Jerí Oré, then José María Balcázar) before the election this document anticipates was actually held.

The correction. After an 8 October 2025 concert shooting in Lima read as the breaking point of a sustained extortion-and-homicide crisis, Congress voted to remove Boluarte under Article 113 ("permanent moral incapacity") just after midnight on 10 October 2025 — reported at 122 in favour, none against (Colombia One; Wikipedia's Impeachment of Dina Boluarte), though a different set of outlets consulted in the Wave 11 pass on this corpus recorded 124–0 [TBD-VERIFY: exact vote count, 122 vs. 124, pending the Congressional Resolución Legislativa]. José Jerí Oré, then President of Congress, was sworn in as interim President the same night. Jerí was himself removed on 17–18 February 2026 in the "Chifagate" scandal — undisclosed meetings with two Chinese businessmen, one holding active state contracts — and Congress elected José María Balcázar, an 83-year-old former judge affiliated with Perú Libre, as the next interim President [search-corroborated via CNN, "Peru's leader José Jerí ousted over 'Chifa-gate' scandal," 17 February 2026; Al Jazeera, 17 February 2026; NPR, "Peru new president," 19 February 2026]. It was Balcázar, not Boluarte, who presided over the 12 April 2026 first round, the 7 June 2026 runoff, and the 28 July 2026 transfer of power to Keiko Fujimori. The full corrected sequence is at PE-D-04 §14, PE-D-07 §12, PE-D-08 §12, PE-D-06 §15, and PE-H-PRES-07 §16; it is not re-derived here.

What this changes in this document's specific claims. The bicameral architecture in §3 (Ley No. 32101, the Senate/Chamber mechanics) was promulgated in November 2024, under Boluarte, and is unaffected by the later succession. The security-crisis and Interior-portfolio-rotation narrative in §4 (through the Echeandía resignation of April 2025) predates the removal and stands as written; whether the Tren de Aragua and estado de emergencia pattern continued under Jerí and Balcázar in the same form was not established in this pass. The Tribunal Constitucional–JNJ–Fiscalía contest in §5, including the Caso Rolex continuation (§5.5), describes a dispute that this document expected to extend "into the post-July-2026 period" under Boluarte's continuing Article 117 immunity; that immunity in fact ceased at her removal on 10 October 2025, roughly nine months earlier than assumed — see PE-D-04 §14 for the same correction applied there, including the open question of the case's post-removal procedural status. The candidate field in §6 is superseded by the certified 12 April 2026 first-round result in PE-D-06 §15 and PE-D-08 §12.

Pedro Castillo's trial, referenced only in passing in this document via PE-D-04 and PE-D-02, reached a verdict on 27 November 2025: the Sala Penal Especial convicted Castillo of conspiracy for rebellion (not rebellion itself) and sentenced him to 11 years, 5 months, and 15 days, with a two-year disqualification from public office; an appeal remains pending [search-corroborated via the Washington Post, Washington Times, and Al Jazeera, all 27 November 2025].

Document status: [TBD-VERIFY-PENDING] (unchanged). Version date: 2026-08-29.

Sources

Congreso de la República del Perú, Ley No. 32101 — Ley de Reforma Constitucional para Restablecer la Bicameralidad en el Congreso de la República, promulgated 28 November 2024 (published in El Peruano 29 November 2024); the prior Ley No. 31988 of March 2024 (first-round bicameral approval) and the parliamentary Dictamen of the Comisión de Constitución y Reglamento.
Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE), Cronograma Electoral Elecciones Generales 2026, Resolución No. 0123-2025-JNE; Reglamento de Inscripción de Fórmulas y Candidatos; Registro de Organizaciones Políticas (ROP) records 2024–2025.
Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (ONPE), Resolución Jefatural on the 2025 internal-democracy primarias calendar; Plan Operativo Electoral 2026; reports on the November–December 2025 PASO-equivalent simultaneous primary date.
Registro Nacional de Identificación y Estado Civil (RENIEC), padrón-electoral records and Listado Nominal de Electores updates 2024–2025.
Tribunal Constitucional del Perú, selected sentencias and autos on the bicameral-reform challenges, on the Espinoza–Benavides Fiscalía dispute, and on individual acciones de amparo relating to candidate-disqualification proceedings, 2024–2025.
Junta Nacional de Justicia (JNJ), resolutions and informes on Fiscalía-leadership matters and on the Espinoza–Benavides litigation 2024–2025.
Ministerio del Interior, Decretos Supremos declaring and renewing the states of emergency in Lima Metropolitan, Callao, La Libertad (Trujillo), Lambayeque, Pataz, and selected coastal districts 2024–2025; cabinet Acuerdos del Consejo de Ministros on security policy.
Policía Nacional del Perú (PNP), Comandancia General communications and Plan de Operaciones under successive commanders 2024–2025; Inspectoría General reports.
Ministerio Público (Fiscalía de la Nación), carpetas fiscales on Tren de Aragua-related criminal proceedings (Caso Los Pulpos, Caso La Jauría, Caso Los Gallegos, Caso Tren del Norte and parallel investigations 2023–2025); Disposiciones Fiscales on the Caso Rolex continuation; the constitutional-accusation referrals to Congress.
Instituto Nacional de Estadística e Informática (INEI), Estadísticas de Seguridad Ciudadana (homicide statistics by department 2019–2025); Producto Bruto Interno Trimestral 2024–2025; Encuesta Nacional de Hogares (ENAHO) on victimisation and informal-economy indicators.
Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP), Reporte de Inflación (March, June, September, December issues 2024 and March 2025); Programa Monetario monthly minutes 2024–2025; Memoria Anual 2024; Notas Informativas on the policy-rate trajectory under Governor Julio Velarde Flores.
Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas (MEF), Marco Macroeconómico Multianual 2025–2028 and the August 2025 Actualización; Reporte de Seguimiento de Inversiones 2024–2025; Proyecto de Presupuesto Público 2026.
APEC Peru 2024 Secretariat, Lima Declaration of 16 November 2024; the trilateral Xi–Biden communications; subsequent diplomatic readouts.
COSCO Shipping Ports and the Peruvian Autoridad Portuaria Nacional, communications relating to the Chancay Megaport inauguration (14 November 2024) and the early-operating-period throughput data 2024–2025.
Defensoría del Pueblo del Perú, Reporte Mensual de Conflictos Sociales 2024–2025 (mining-corridor episodes Las Bambas, Apurímac–Cusco, Espinar, Tía María); Informes sobre el Estado de la Función Fiscal y Policial.
United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the Federal Register announcements on the Trump-2 "Liberation Day" tariff regime of 2 April 2025 and subsequent country-specific adjustments through May 2025; Embassy of Peru in Washington communications.
Wayka.pe, IDL-Reporteros, OjoPúblico, Convoca, Salud con Lupa, La República, El Comercio, RPP Noticias, Canal N, RTV Capital, Infobae Perú, and Caretas archive coverage 2024–2025.
Reuters Lima Bureau, AFP Lima Bureau, Bloomberg Lima, and Financial Times Latin America bureau dispatches 2024–2025.
Wilson Center Latin American Program, Peru's Political Crisis and Peru 2026 Election Outlook policy briefs (Cynthia McClintock and collaborators) 2024–2025; Inter-American Dialogue Peru Working Group updates.
Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (IDEHPUCP), Anuario sobre Derechos Humanos 2024; commentaries on the bicameral reform and the security-crisis governance; selected reports on the protest-period accountability.
Asociación Civil Transparencia, Reporte de la Reforma Política 2024–2025; Datos Electorales series on the 2026 cycle.
Steven Levitsky, multiple analyses in Foreign Affairs, Journal of Democracy, and academic outlets 2024–2025; Alberto Vergara, op-ed and academic commentary 2024–2025; Carlos Meléndez and Paula Muñoz, electoral-cycle analytical commentary 2024–2025; Eduardo Dargent on the Peruvian state-capacity question.
[2026-08-29 recency update, search-corroborated] Colombia One ("Peru's Congress Impeaches Dina Boluarte, Installs José Jerí as Interim President," 10 October 2025) and Wikipedia's Impeachment of Dina Boluarte summary of contemporaneous reporting, on the 10 October 2025 vacancia vote.
[2026-08-29 recency update, search-corroborated] CNN ("Peru's leader José Jerí ousted over 'Chifa-gate' scandal," 17 February 2026), Al Jazeera (17 February 2026), and NPR ("Peru new president," 19 February 2026), on the Jerí removal and Balcázar's election as interim President.
[2026-08-29 recency update, search-corroborated] Washington Post, Washington Times, and Al Jazeera, all 27 November 2025, on the Sala Penal Especial verdict against Pedro Castillo.

PE-A-01: Fujimori First Presidency (1990–2000) — constitutional-architecture predecessor; the 1993 unicameral-Congress regime that Ley No. 32101 reverses, and the fujimorismo electoral force whose 2026 expression in the Keiko Fujimori candidacy is the principal continuity
PE-A-02: 2000 Fujimori Collapse and the Paniagua Transitional Government — the post-Fujimori instability frame within which the 2026 election sits
PE-B-01: Humala and Kuczynski Presidencies (2011–2018) — the prior centre-left/centre-right cycle; the institutional-template comparator
PE-D-01: Toledo–García Presidencies (2001–2011) — the longer-arc post-Fujimori comparator
PE-D-02: 7 December 2022 Castillo Auto-Coup Attempt and Removal — the institutional-rupture event whose three-year aftermath the 2026 election will test
PE-D-03: December 2022 – 2023 Boluarte-Era Protests — protest-cycle backdrop; the casualty record that conditions the 2026 electoral legitimacy debate
PE-D-04: Boluarte Government 2023–2025 — direct predecessor; the cabinet, Caso Rolex, macroeconomic, and pre-election baseline this document continues
PE-J-03: December 2022 – 2023 Protest Casualties — contested-record companion
PE-J-04: Lava Jato Implications for Peruvian Politics — corruption-prosecution-architecture companion
PE-K-01: 1993 Constitution and Fujimori Autogolpe Aftermath (1992–2000) — constitutional-architecture predecessor; Articles 90, 113.2, 117, 134, 137 and the bicameral structures restored by Ley No. 32101
PE-O-01: Presidential-Instability Trajectory and Possible Constitutional Reform — structural-reading frame doc
PE-R-01: Peru Governance Books Canon — source-canon parent
PE-A-04: Peru Congressional Architecture and Bicameralism Restoration (2023-2026)
PE-D-06: Peru 2026 general election + post-Boluarte transition
PE-A-03: The Velasco Alvarado Military Government, Agrarian Reform, and the Bermúdez Phase
PE-H-PRES-04: Ollanta Moisés Humala Tasso — A Biography
PE-H-PRES-06: José Pedro Castillo Terrones — A Biography
PE-H-PRES-07: Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra — A Biography
PE-J-01: Lava Jato in Peru — The Odebrecht–Camargo Corrêa Bribery Architecture and the Six-President Prosecutorial Sequence
PE-G-02: Peruvian Mining Political Economy — Copper, Gold, the Communidad-Conflict Cycle, and the Post-2003 Commodity Supercycle
PE-D-07: Boluarte's Final Year (August 2025 – July 2026) — Pre-Election Limbo, Cabinet Rotation, and the Pre-Transfer-of-Power Dynamics
PE-D-08: Peru's 2026 Second-Round Runoff and the Post-Election Transition — The 7 June 2026 Runoff, the Bicameral First-Test Senate–Chamber Dynamics, the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario Transfer of Power, and the 2026–2031 Governing Arithmetic
PE-N-01: Peru in International Perceptions — Fragile Democracy, Resource State
PE-G-03: The Informality Political Economy — The Other Path and the Seventy-Percent Economy (1980–2026)
PE-I-02: Peruvian Decentralisation — Regional Governments and the Territorial State
PE-J-02: Three Accounts — The 2009 Bagua Massacre (El Baguazo)
PE-M-01: Fujimorismo as Political Idea and Movement
PE-F-01: back-reference added by symmetry sweep