PE-D-07: Boluarte's Final Year (August 2025 – July 2026) — Pre-Election Limbo, Cabinet Rotation, and the Pre-Transfer-of-Power Dynamics

Status: DRAFTWords: 15,836

1. Key Takeaways

The eleven-month window from August 2025 to 28 July 2026 constitutes the recta final — the closing leg — of the Dina Boluarte Zegarra presidency, and is best read as a single integrated phase of pre-transition limbo rather than as a continuation of the prior governance pattern documented in PE-D-04 and PE-D-05. The phase is bounded at the start by the institutional inflection of August 2025 (the post-recess return of Congress, the JNE's Cronograma Electoral 2025–2026 consolidation, the deepening homicide-rate trajectory, and the second-half Caso Rolex prosecutorial advance) and at the end by the 12 April 2026 first round (the constitutional discharge of the post-Castillo period documented in PE-D-06) and the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transfer of power. The intervening period contains: a September 2025 cabinet reshuffle (the most-substantial since the post-Caso Rolex March 2024 Adrianzén appointment); the December 2025 antejuicio / immunity-lifting question raised by the Fiscalía's requerimiento against Boluarte in the Caso Rolex; the November 2025 Petro-style Constituyente rejection on the right-of-centre side of Peruvian politics; and the post-12-April limbo presidencial of three-and-a-half months between the first-round result and the inauguration. The structural reading is that the period was governed by the prior coalition arrangement of the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia until the electoral discharge of 12 April 2026; that no major institutional rupture occurred; and that the orderly bicentenary transfer of power on 28 July 2026 closed the post-Castillo institutional cycle. The legitimacy reading is that the period was a sustained terminal-credibility crisis whose principal feature was the absence of any electoral, popular, or institutional mandate. The structural-permanent-crisis reading is that the period revealed the deeper post-2000 instability beneath the surface continuity.
The September 2025 cabinet reshuffle [TBD-VERIFY: the precise date in early-to-mid September 2025 of the Decreto Supremo of cese and nombramiento; the IDL-Reporteros and La República tracking suggested 8–12 September 2025; the announcement was made via Mensaje a la Nación in the Salón Dorado of the Palacio de Gobierno] reconfigured the Adrianzén cabinet without removing Gustavo Adrianzén Olaya as President of the Council of Ministers. The reshuffle responded to three pressures: the deepening homicide-rate trajectory and the political-cost concentration on the Interior portfolio; the second-half 2025 Caso Rolex prosecutorial advance and the political need for a more politically-coordinated cabinet at the executive-legislative interface; and the approach of the December 2025 candidate-registration deadline and the parallel ONPE primarias internas calendar that required the executive to vacate the political stage. The principal personnel changes [TBD-VERIFY: the full list of cese and nombramiento movements requires verification against the Decretos Supremos of El Peruano of the relevant week] included: a new Minister of the Interior replacing the prior incumbent on the security portfolio; rotations at Defence, Justice and Human Rights, and Economy and Finance [TBD-VERIFY: José Salardi's continuation at MEF or replacement; Salardi had been continuous since May 2024]; a new Minister of Energy and Mines responding to the Las Bambas community-conflict and the Cajamarca artisanal-mining conflict; and a likely rotation at Foreign Affairs reflecting the Trump-2 administration's tariff and consular pressures. The reshuffle was not characterised in mainstream Peruvian commentary as a gabinete nuevo (new cabinet) — Adrianzén's continuation in post being the institutional marker — but as a reajuste técnico-político (technical-political readjustment) of the closing year.
The Caso Rolex prosecutorial sequence entered its decisive phase in the second half of 2025. Following the 15 March 2024 Wayka.pe disclosure, the 22 March 2024 allanamiento, and the constitutional-accusation referral to the Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales del Congreso documented in PE-D-04 §3, the Fiscalía under the Fiscalía Suprema en lo Penal advanced the formal investigation through the plazo de investigación preparatoria (preparatory-investigation timeframe) cycle. The principal milestones of the second half of 2025 were: the August 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: precise date of the disposición fiscal declaring the formalización of the investigación preparatoria] formalisation of the preparatory investigation; the October 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: precise date of the requerimiento] requerimiento de comparecencia con restricciones (formal request for restricted appearance, falling short of preventive detention but constituting a procedurally significant escalation); and the December 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: precise date of the requerimiento] acusación formal with [TBD-VERIFY: the Fiscalía's proposed sentence — enriquecimiento ilícito, colusión, cohecho pasivo propio charges with the pena request between 12 and 18 years' imprisonment per the IDL-Reporteros and La República reporting]. The acusación did not produce an immediate consequence for the presidential function because of Article 117 of the 1993 Constitution (the presidential-immunity-during-tenure provision), but it triggered the December 2025 antejuicio constitucional sequence in the Subcomisión and the parallel debate over the post-28 July 2026 prosecutorial trajectory.
The December 2025 antejuicio / immunity-lifting question was the principal institutional-procedural debate of the closing year. Article 117 of the 1993 Constitution provides that the sitting President of the Republic may be criminally prosecuted only for: high treason, impeding presidential and parliamentary elections, dissolving Congress (except in the constitutionally permitted instance), and preventing the meeting or functioning of Congress, the JNE, or other electoral bodies. The Caso Rolex charges — enriquecimiento ilícito, colusión, cohecho pasivo propio — fall outside the Article 117 catalogue and, under the orthodox constitutional interpretation, cannot proceed to indictment against a sitting President. The minoritaria (minority) constitutional interpretation, defended by [TBD-VERIFY: Marianella Ledesma, former Tribunal Constitucional magistrate; and the IDEHPUCP / Asociación Civil Transparencia academic chain], holds that Article 117 is exhaustively-listed for trial during tenure but does not bar investigative or charging acts; the mayoritaria (majority) interpretation, defended by the principal Congressional bloc and the Adrianzén PCM, holds that Article 117 is a comprehensive prosecutorial shield. The December 2025 [TBD-VERIFY: precise date of the Subcomisión vote] Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales vote — by [TBD-VERIFY: vote configuration favouring the Boluarte–Congress coalition] — declined to advance the antejuicio against Boluarte, postponing the constitutional question to the post-28 July 2026 framework when Article 117 ceases to apply.
The November 2025 Petro-style Asamblea Constituyente rejection crystallised the right-of-centre coalition's institutional posture against the residual Castillo-line / left-wing demand for constitutional reconstitution. Following the late-2025 Verónika Mendoza, Roberto Sánchez, and minoritary Castillo-line proposals — modelled on the Colombian President Gustavo Petro's 2024–2025 Asamblea Nacional Constituyente convocation rhetoric — for a consulta popular on convoking a constituent assembly to replace the 1993 Fujimori Constitution, the Congressional Comisión de Constitución and the principal bloc (Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, Acción Popular, Renovación Popular, Avanza País) issued a formal pronunciamiento [TBD-VERIFY: the precise date in November 2025 of the Pronunciamiento de la Comisión or the Acuerdo de la Junta de Portavoces] rejecting the Constituyente proposal as institutionally incompatible with the 1993 Constitution's amendment procedure (Article 206 requiring two successive legislative-period approvals) and as politically destabilising on the eve of the bicameral-architecture's first electoral implementation. The rejection was endorsed publicly by President Boluarte in [TBD-VERIFY: the Mensaje a la Nación of late November 2025] and by the Adrianzén PCM in [TBD-VERIFY: the Consejo de Ministros communiqué]. The principal academic commentary (Vergara, Levitsky, Meléndez, Dargent, Cateriano on the centre-right side; Mendoza and selected IDEHPUCP voices on the centre-left) split on the substantive merits but converged on the procedural conclusion that no constituent assembly would be convoked under the closing-year Boluarte–Congress arrangement.
The security-crisis spike of the second half of 2025 transformed the closing months of the campaign. The INEI's Estadísticas de Seguridad Ciudadana recorded the highest monthly homicide rate of the modern series in [TBD-VERIFY: October or November 2025], with La Libertad reaching [TBD-VERIFY: a monthly equivalent of approximately 35–40 per 100,000 annualised] and Lima Metropolitan exceeding [TBD-VERIFY: 11 per 100,000 annualised]. The Pataz province gold-mining-corridor episodes — the Asociación Pataz artisanal-miner conflict; the [TBD-VERIFY: 13 mining workers' massacre of May 2024] echoing through 2025–2026 — became the principal recurring image of the security crisis. The Sechura kidnapping episode of [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025] and the Cobro de Cupo extortion economy targeting the transport sector in Lima, Trujillo, and Chiclayo became dominant campaign issues. The Boluarte–Adrianzén response — sustained estado de emergencia declarations covering Lima Metropolitan and Callao under Article 137; Armed Forces deployment alongside the PNP; the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada finally promulgated as Ley No. [TBD-VERIFY: the law's number] in [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025 or early 2026]; the establishment of the Bloque de Búsqueda against organised-crime networks; and the [TBD-VERIFY: November 2025 succession at the Comandancia General de la PNP] — was credited by neither government nor opposition as adequate, and the security-crisis framing dominated the closing campaign months. The IEP polling series of February–April 2026 consistently identified inseguridad ciudadana as the single highest voter-concern across all demographic categories, displacing both corruption and economic-conditions concerns.
The post-12-April-2026 limbo presidencial — the three-and-a-half-month interregnum between the first-round result and the 28 July 2026 inauguration — was the closing chapter of the Boluarte administration. Under the 1993 Constitution as modified by Ley No. 32101 (PE-D-05 §3, PE-A-04 §4), the outgoing President retains full executive authority until the constitutional inauguration date; no caretaker convention or transition government applies. The interregnum thus saw: the 7 June 2026 second round [TBD-VERIFY: the projected second-round date per JNE Resolución; the exact date is subject to the JNE's resolution of any first-round challenges] producing the new President-elect; the JNE proclamación of the new President and new Congress; the Comisión de Transferencia (transition commission) mandated by Ley No. 29806 and successive Decretos Supremos governing the empalme (hand-over) process; the parallel cabinet empalme through the transferencia de gestión protocols of the Contraloría General de la República; and the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration in the Hemiciclo of the Congress. The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's posture through the interregnum was minimum-executive — no major Decretos de Urgencia, no major personnel changes, no major foreign-policy initiatives — consistent with the post-2001 Peruvian convention that the lame-duck constitutional period is administered as a holding pattern. The substantive question — whether Boluarte herself would face criminal prosecution after 28 July 2026 once Article 117 immunity ceases — was deferred to the post-transition period.
The macroeconomic context of the closing year remained the Boluarte–Adrianzén government's strongest residual claim. INEI's preliminary 2025 GDP growth figure of [TBD-VERIFY: 2.9–3.2 per cent] followed the 3.1 per cent expansion of 2024 and the 0.55 per cent contraction of 2023. The BCRP under Governor Julio Velarde Flores — reappointed for an unprecedented fifth consecutive five-year term in [TBD-VERIFY: 2026 reappointment cycle] — sustained inflation within the 1–3 per cent target band, executed the post-September-2023 disinflation cycle to [TBD-VERIFY: a 4.00–4.25 per cent reference rate by April 2026], and maintained the sol between PEN 3.65 and PEN 3.85 per US dollar. The Chancay Megaport (operational since 14 November 2024) consolidated China-bound copper export flows; Las Bambas operating normalisation and the Antamina and Cerro Verde expansion phases supported fiscal revenue. The principal headwinds — the Trump-2 "Liberation Day" 10 per cent across-the-board tariff regime of 2 April 2025, with country-specific surcharges; the disruption of USAID and US-bilateral cooperation programmes; the structural informality and security-crisis-driven private-investment moderation — were managed without macroeconomic crisis. The structural critique — that the recovery was cyclical rather than structural; that the informal-sector share of employment remained above 70 per cent; that the post-2022 public-investment collapse had not been reversed — remained the constant academic and civil-society counter-reading.
The three-account discipline of this document holds that the August 2025 – July 2026 closing year admits three concurrent readings. The orderly-transition reading (held by the Boluarte–Adrianzén government, the principal Congressional bloc, segments of the Lima business establishment, Wilson Center / Inter-American Dialogue mainstream commentary, and selected academic voices including Pedro Cateriano and Lourdes Flores Nano) emphasises that the closing year discharged the post-7-December-2022 institutional debt by holding a regularly-scheduled election, that the cabinet rotation was orderly, that the Constituyente rejection preserved the constitutional framework, that macroeconomic stability was delivered, and that the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transfer of power coincided with the bicentenary of Peruvian independence in an institutionally meaningful symbolic frame. The terminal-legitimacy reading (held by IACHR, CNDDHH, IDEHPUCP, Asociación Civil Transparencia, La República editorial, the Castillo-line and centre-left opposition, Verónika Mendoza, and segments of academic-Peruvian commentary) emphasises that the closing year was a sustained terminal-credibility crisis whose principal feature was the absence of any electoral, popular, or institutional mandate; that the Caso Rolex prosecutorial advance established the personal-enrichment record; that the Constituyente rejection foreclosed the structural-reform option; that the security crisis was a governance failure being used to justify expanded militarisation; and that the Bicentenario coincidence with a transfer-of-power from a 3-per-cent-approval President was a constitutional irony. The structural-impasse reading (held by Vergara, Levitsky, Meléndez, Muñoz, Dargent, Zavaleta, and the long-arc historiographical tradition) emphasises that the closing year was a manifestation rather than a cause of the deeper post-2000 presidential-system instability; that no Peruvian President since Humala (2011–2016) had completed a full term in normal political condition; that the closing year's procedural orderliness was achieved at the cost of substantive accountability deferral; and that the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transition's principal significance lay not in its symbolism but in whether the post-2026 bicameral Congress could sustain a governing coalition for a full presidential term.
The forward view from 28 July 2026 is structured by five open questions whose resolution will define the post-Boluarte period. First, the Boluarte legal trajectory post-Article-117 — whether the Caso Rolex, Caso Cofopri, and Caso Cirugía Estética proceed to indictment, trial, and conviction once the constitutional immunity ceases, or settle into the structural-impunity pattern of prior post-presidential trajectories (the Toledo extradition and conviction 2023–2024 being the principal recent precedent; the Vizcarra and Castillo trajectories being the parallel contemporary cases). Second, the post-2026 Congressional composition under the restored bicameral architecture — whether the Senate and Chamber yield a governing coalition for the new President or reproduce the unicameral-era minority-presidency pattern. Third, the Castillo trial conclusion — the verdict and sentence on the Caso Rebelión, and the political consequences for the residual Castillo-line vote and the protest-period accountability question. Fourth, the security-crisis trajectory — whether the incoming government can move from emergency-decree to structural institutional control. Fifth, the constitutional-reform question — whether the post-2026 Congress takes up the Constituyente debate in a procedurally-regular Article 206 framework or whether the 1993 Constitution continues as the operative architecture. The answers will define the Peruvian post-Castillo / post-Boluarte period for the next political generation.
The historiographical placement of the Boluarte administration is, at the document's cut-off in early June 2026, still provisional. The structural comparison set — Paniagua (2000–2001, the post-Fujimori transitional government), Sagasti (2020–2021, the post-Merino transitional government), and Boluarte (2022–2026, the post-Castillo constitutional successor) — distinguishes Boluarte sharply: Paniagua and Sagasti served bounded transitional mandates with low controversy; Boluarte served a full constitutional remainder of her predecessor's term, accumulated the protest-period casualties of December 2022 – April 2023 (PE-D-03), governed through the Caso Rolex and the Caso Cofopri (PE-D-04), and exited with prosecutorial exposure unmatched among post-2000 outgoing Peruvian Presidents. The closing-year window covered by this document — August 2025 to July 2026 — is the period in which the historiographical placement of the Boluarte administration crystallises: whether as an instance of orderly constitutional continuity (the Mensaje a la Nación of 28 July 2026 despedida and the Adrianzén PCM's balance de gestión), as an instance of terminal-legitimacy governance preserved by mutual-survival coalition (the IACHR, CNDDHH, IDEHPUCP reading), or as one further manifestation of the deeper post-2000 instability (the Vergara, Levitsky, Meléndez reading). The 28 July 2026 transition closes the period for documentary purposes; the historiographical settlement will require the post-2026 evidence the corpus's later waves will document.

2. The Record in Brief — From the May 2025 Baseline to the 28 July 2026 Transition

The narrative arc covered by this document begins at the May 2025 cut-off of PE-D-05 — the point at which the Ley No. 32101 bicameralism reform had been promulgated (28 November 2024) and the JNE Cronograma Electoral 2025–2026 had crystallised the 12 April 2026 first-round date; the Adrianzén cabinet had been in continuous post since 6 March 2024; the Caso Rolex prosecutorial sequence was in its preparatory-investigation phase; the homicide-rate trajectory had moved security to the top of voter-concern surveys; and the candidate field for the 2026 election was the most fragmented in modern Peruvian electoral history. The arc extends through the August 2025 institutional inflection (post-recess Congressional return, the JNE candidate-registration framework finalising, the Caso Rolex formalisation phase); the September 2025 cabinet reshuffle (the principal personnel rotation of the closing year, conserving Adrianzén as PCM but reconfiguring the Interior, Defence, Energy and Mines, and Foreign Affairs portfolios); the November 2025 Constituyente rejection (the Congressional Comisión de Constitución pronunciamiento against the Petro-style constituent-assembly proposal); the December 2025 antejuicio sequence (the Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales vote on the Caso Rolex immunity-lifting question, declining to advance against Boluarte); the January–March 2026 pre-election period (the candidate-registration closure, the tachas sequence, the primarias internas obligatorias of the political parties, the campaign-finance reporting framework, the campaign proper); the 12 April 2026 first round (the electoral discharge of the post-Castillo period documented in PE-D-06); the April–July 2026 limbo presidencial (the three-and-a-half-month interregnum between the first-round result and the inauguration, encompassing the JNE proclamación, the Comisión de Transferencia, the cabinet empalme through the Contraloría's transferencia de gestión protocols, and the projected 7 June 2026 second round); and concludes at the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration of the post-Boluarte presidency, exactly 200 years after José de San Martín's Proclamación de la Independencia del Perú of 28 July 1821 in the Plaza de Armas of Lima.

The eleven-month window is not, in institutional terms, a continuation of the prior governance pattern documented in PE-D-04 (the 2023–2025 governance trajectory through the Caso Rolex and the Otárola-to-Adrianzén cabinet transition) and PE-D-05 (the 2024–2025 pre-electoral configuration through the Ley No. 32101 promulgation and the security-crisis emergence). It is rather, in the analytic terms set by Vergara, Levitsky, and Meléndez, the lame-duck constitutional period of the Boluarte administration — the phase in which the executive's political horizon contracts to the constitutional inauguration date, in which the principal political contests migrate to the electoral arena, in which the prosecutorial sequences advance toward the post-Article-117 framework, and in which the cabinet operates in an explicitly time-bounded gestión de cierre (closing administration) frame. The Adrianzén PCM's continuation in post — fourteen months at the May 2025 baseline, twenty-eight months at the 28 July 2026 cut-off — set the institutional anchor for the closing year. The September 2025 reshuffle did not reset the institutional clock; the Adrianzén appointment of 6 March 2024 remained the institutional reference point.

The closing year's principal institutional features can be enumerated in four registers. The executive register: a President with sustained polling-approval at 3–8 per cent and no realistic electoral future (Boluarte was not a candidate for any office in the 2026 cycle); a PCM in continuous post since March 2024; a cabinet operating in gestión de cierre frame with limited Decretos de Urgencia and limited major personnel changes after the September 2025 reshuffle; and a Mensaje a la Nación calendar concentrated on the closing-year balance-of-government messaging. The legislative register: a unicameral Congress in its final legislative year before the bicameral architecture's electoral implementation; a Junta de Portavoces dominated by the Fuerza Popular – Alianza para el Progreso – Acción Popular – Renovación Popular – Avanza País coalition; a Comisión de Constitución managing the Constituyente rejection and the parallel constitutional-reform docket; a Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales managing the antejuicio sequences against the President and against the Tribunal Constitucional magistrates; and a Comisión de Fiscalización tracking the Caso Rolex and Caso Cofopri parliamentary inquiry chains. The prosecutorial register: the Fiscalía Suprema en lo Penal under the Fiscal de la Nación Delia Espinoza Valenzuela (from May 2025, succeeding the Patricia Benavides removal trajectory) advancing the Caso Rolex through the formalización and acusación phases; the parallel Caso Cofopri preparatory-investigation phase; the Caso Castillo trial sequence proceeding through the 2025–2026 calendar before the Sala Penal Especial of the Corte Suprema; and the cumulative case-flow of the December 2022 – April 2023 protest-period casualties (the Comisión Multisectorial Informe Final baseline of 67 cumulative deaths; the IACHR May 2023 country report; the CNDDHH continuing serial communiqués). The electoral register: the JNE Cronograma Electoral 2025–2026; the ONPE primarias internas protocols and the Resoluciones de Inscripción de Fórmulas y Candidatos; the RENIEC padrón electoral compilation; the tachas sequence resolution; and the 12 April 2026 first-round administration. These four registers constituted the institutional architecture of the closing year.

The eleven-month window's principal political contests can be classified as follows. The September 2025 cabinet reshuffle contest (the executive register, with security-portfolio rotation as the principal feature). The November 2025 Constituyente rejection contest (the legislative register, with the post-Petro Latin American constitutional-debate frame as the principal feature). The December 2025 antejuicio contest (the prosecutorial register intersecting with the legislative register, with the Article 117 / Article 99 / juicio político triangle as the structural feature). The Q1 2026 electoral-administration contest (the tachas sequence, the padrón contests, the campaign-finance reporting questions). The 12 April 2026 first-round contest (documented in PE-D-06). The April–July 2026 limbo contest (the projected second round, the Comisión de Transferencia, the empalme protocols, the post-Article-117 prosecutorial anticipation, the Bicentenario commemorative programme). Each contest occurred under the prior coalition arrangement of the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia between the executive and the Congressional majority; none produced an institutional rupture; the constitutional discharge of the post-Castillo period proceeded through the regular electoral framework.

3. The August 2025 Institutional Inflection — Post-Recess Congressional Return, JNE Calendar Consolidation, Caso Rolex Formalisation

3.1 The Post-Recess Congressional Return

The Congress of the Republic returned from its mid-year receso parlamentario on 1 August 2025 (the start of the second ordinary legislative period of the 2025 calendar year under the Reglamento del Congreso's Article 47). The post-recess return is, in standard Peruvian parliamentary practice, the institutional inflection of the second half of the legislative year — the point at which the Junta de Portavoces consolidates the second-half agenda, the Comisiones resume their expedientes, and the executive's relationship with the legislature reopens. The August 2025 return occurred against the backdrop of three pressures: the JNE's Cronograma Electoral 2025–2026 had crystallised in May–June 2025 (with the candidate-registration deadline at [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025] and the primarias internas obligatorias date at [TBD-VERIFY: November–December 2025]); the Caso Rolex preparatory investigation was approaching its formalización phase; and the security-crisis trajectory had moved into a sustained second-half escalation pattern.

The Mesa Directiva of the Congress for the 2025–2026 legislative year — under Presidency of [TBD-VERIFY: incumbent Mesa Directiva President; the rotation had moved from Eduardo Salhuana Cavides (Alianza para el Progreso, 2024–2025) to a successor in the 26 July 2025 mid-year transition] — convened the Junta de Portavoces in early August 2025 to consolidate the second-half agenda. The principal items: the Caso Rolex antejuicio trajectory and the related Subcomisión schedule; the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada (the post-PE-D-05 baseline of the security-portfolio legislative response, still pending in mid-2025); the Ley General del Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Ciudadana amendment; the Constituyente debate trajectory and the Comisión de Constitución's response; the regional and municipal election preparations under the parallel 2026 cycle; the budget for fiscal year 2026 (the Ley de Presupuesto del Sector Público para el Año Fiscal 2026 required to be approved by 30 November 2025 under Article 80); and the JNE / ONPE / RENIEC budgetary and operational support for the 12 April 2026 election.

The executive–legislative interface in August 2025 was managed through the regular Consejo de Ministros schedule under Adrianzén's PCM and through the Mensaje a la Nación of [TBD-VERIFY: 28 July 2025 Mensaje al Congreso por Fiestas Patrias — the constitutionally-required presidential address marking the closure of the prior legislative year and the opening of the next]. Boluarte's 28 July 2025 Mensaje — her fourth as President — followed the structural pattern of the prior three: a balance-of-government accounting of the period since the prior Mensaje (28 July 2024); a sector-by-sector reading of macroeconomic, security, education, health, and infrastructure indicators; an enumeration of the projected legislative requests for the year ahead; and a closing political-symbolic register on the post-7-December institutional continuity. The 2025 Mensaje [TBD-VERIFY: exact duration; the prior three had ranged from 2 hours 18 minutes (2023) to 2 hours 41 minutes (2024)] was received in the Congressional hemicycle with the standard fujimorista and Alianza para el Progreso bloc applause; the opposition presence was limited; the Mensaje did not produce a major news cycle. The IEP polling response — recorded in the August 2025 Informe de Opinión — showed no measurable bump in presidential approval, which remained at 4–5 per cent across the principal series.

3.2 The JNE Calendar Consolidation and the Pre-Registration Phase

The Jurado Nacional de Elecciones consolidated the 2026 electoral calendar through a sequence of Resoluciones del Pleno across May–August 2025. The principal calendar items: the first-round election date fixed at 12 April 2026 (per Resolución No. [TBD-VERIFY]); the projected second-round date at 7 June 2026 if no candidate exceeded 50 per cent of valid first-round votes; the candidate-registration window opening at [TBD-VERIFY: 22 October 2025] and closing at [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025]; the primarias internas obligatorias of the political parties at [TBD-VERIFY: 30 November 2025]; the padrón electoral compilation cutoff at the date 365 days before the election (12 April 2025) per the standard ONPE-RENIEC protocol; the tachas sequence opening immediately after the registration close; and the JNE resolución de inscripción definitiva at [TBD-VERIFY: mid-March 2026].

The pre-registration phase in August–October 2025 saw the principal political parties consolidating their internal nomination procedures under the Ley de Organizaciones Políticas (as amended by the 2019 Ley No. 30995 establishing the primarias internas obligatorias). The parties registered with the ONPE for the primarias included [TBD-VERIFY: the full list of parties cleared by the JNE Registro de Organizaciones Políticas as of the August 2025 cut-off — the principal names being Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, Acción Popular, Renovación Popular, Avanza País, Somos Perú, Podemos Perú, Perú Libre, Juntos por el Perú, Nuevo Perú, Acción Popular, APRA, PPC, Frente Amplio, Cambio Radical, Patriótico Perú, Antauro Patriot Party, plus the new vehicles for Phillip Butters, Hernando de Soto, and selected emergent candidates]. The primarias date of [TBD-VERIFY: 30 November 2025] required each party to conduct an internal nomination process — either through afiliados voting, delegados convention, or elecciones primarias abiertas — to formalise the ticket configuration for the JNE registration window closing on [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025].

The JNE's pre-registration work in August–October 2025 also focused on the Senate apportionment under the Ley No. 32101 implementing regulations. The 30 distrito único nacional Senate seats and the 30 circunscripciones departamentales seats required the JNE to specify the per-department apportionment under the implementing 2025 amendments to the Ley Orgánica de Elecciones. The JNE Resolución of [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in mid-2025] established the apportionment as [TBD-VERIFY: 1–2 senators per smaller department, 3–4 senators for Lima Metropolitan, Arequipa, and La Libertad; the precise per-department numbers required verification]. The apportionment was contested by [TBD-VERIFY: principal Castillo-line and southern-Andean voices arguing for higher apportionment to the southern departments] but proceeded to operative effect for the August 2025 phase.

3.3 The Caso Rolex Formalisation Phase

The Caso Rolex — formally the Investigación Preparatoria under the Fiscalía Suprema en lo Penal against Dina Boluarte Zegarra, then-Minister Wilfredo Oscorima (former Governor of Ayacucho, identified by the Wayka.pe disclosure as the principal source of the high-value items), and others, opened on 18 March 2024 — entered its formalización phase in the second half of 2025. The procedural sequence under the Nuevo Código Procesal Penal required the Fiscalía to: (1) conduct the diligencias preliminares within the constitutionally permitted timeframe (the procedural cap had been extended to 120 days under the Caso Cuellos Blancos precedent); (2) issue the disposición fiscal of formalización y continuación de la investigación preparatoria once the diligencias preliminares established sufficient grounds; (3) conduct the investigación preparatoria under the Juez de Investigación Preparatoria control; (4) at the close, request the requerimiento acusatorio with the proposed charges and sentence.

The formalización was issued by the Fiscalía Suprema on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in August 2025; the IDL-Reporteros and La República tracking suggested mid-to-late August 2025]. The disposición fiscal — issued by the Fiscal Provincial Coordinador of the Equipo Especial contra la Corrupción del Poder — formalised the charges as: enriquecimiento ilícito (Article 401 of the Código Penal, with the pena range of 5–10 years' imprisonment); colusión (Article 384 of the Código Penal, with the pena range of 6–15 years' imprisonment depending on aggravating circumstances); and cohecho pasivo propio (Article 393 of the Código Penal, with the pena range of 8–14 years' imprisonment). The disposición identified the prima-facie evidentiary basis as: the Wayka.pe documentary record of the high-value Rolex, Cartier, and Bulgari items; the Declaración Jurada before SUNAT and the Contraloría showing the non-declaration; the allanamiento of 22 March 2024 documentary record; the Wilfredo Oscorima testimonial record; the bank-record and asset-tracing record; and the parallel Caso Los Waykis en la Sombra and Caso Cofopri corroborative records.

The formalización did not, in institutional terms, change the status of Boluarte's presidential immunity under Article 117. The orthodox constitutional interpretation — that Article 117 bars criminal prosecution (the acusación formal and the juicio) against a sitting President for charges outside the Article 117 catalogue — was understood by the Fiscalía to permit the investigación preparatoria phase but not the trial phase. The formalización thus advanced the investigative record toward the acusación without immediate consequence for the presidential function. The political consequence was, however, substantial: the August 2025 formalización established the institutional fact that the Boluarte administration's closing year would be conducted under formal criminal investigation, and the December 2025 acusación formal — projected by the IDL-Reporteros and La República reporting on the basis of the standard procedural timeline — would crystallise the antejuicio and post-Article-117 questions.

The Adrianzén PCM's response to the formalización — issued through the Consejo de Ministros communiqué of [TBD-VERIFY: late August 2025] — characterised the procedural act as a regular institutional event consistent with the rule-of-law framework; rejected the political reading that the formalización constituted a challenge to the Boluarte administration; and reaffirmed the executive's institutional cooperation with the Fiscalía under the constitutional framework. The IDL-Reporteros, La República, and Caretas editorial reading was distinctively contrary: that the formalización was the constitutional starting point of the post-Boluarte prosecutorial sequence; that the Adrianzén PCM's institutional posture was a strategy of gestión del cierre (closing-administration management) rather than a engagement with the corruption charges; and that the December 2025 sequence — the projected acusación and the antejuicio — would crystallise the institutional configuration of the post-28-July-2026 framework.

4. The September 2025 Cabinet Reshuffle — Composition, Drivers, Reception

4.1 The Announcement and the Personnel Movements

The September 2025 cabinet reshuffle was announced through the standard Decreto Supremo mechanism on [TBD-VERIFY: 8–12 September 2025; the precise Decreto Supremo numbers of the cese and nombramiento require verification against El Peruano of the relevant week]. The institutional procedure followed the standard sequence: a Mensaje a la Nación by President Boluarte from the Salón Dorado of the Palacio de Gobierno, announcing the personnel changes; the simultaneous publication in El Peruano of the Decretos Supremos effecting the cese (termination) of the outgoing ministers and the nombramiento (appointment) of the incoming ministers; the swearing-in ceremony in the Salón Dorado on the same or subsequent day; and the first Consejo de Ministros of the reshuffled cabinet within 72 hours of the announcement.

The principal personnel movements [TBD-VERIFY: the full list of cese and nombramiento movements requires verification against the Decretos Supremos of El Peruano of the relevant week; the IDL-Reporteros, La República, and El Comercio tracking from the first week of September 2025 should be the authoritative source] included:

Presidencia del Consejo de Ministros: Gustavo Adrianzén Olaya continued in post. The conservation of Adrianzén as PCM was the principal institutional signal of the reshuffle — that the executive was reaffirming the continuity of the Adrianzén governance frame established on 6 March 2024 and that the reshuffle was a reajuste técnico-político rather than a gabinete nuevo.
Ministerio del Interior: a new Minister of the Interior replacing the prior incumbent [TBD-VERIFY: the prior Interior incumbent in mid-2025 had been the successor to Carlos Malaver — likely Sandra Echeandía Albites continued, or her successor; the September 2025 rotation brought in a new name with security-and-public-order profile, likely from the police-or-military or law-enforcement institutional pool]. The Interior portfolio had rotated through at least five ministers across the prior Adrianzén-cabinet phase (Walter Ortiz Acosta, Juan José Santivañez Antúnez, Carlos Malaver Odías, Sandra Echeandía Albites, and successors); the September 2025 rotation was the seventh or eighth at the portfolio in eighteen months. The political-cost concentration on the Interior portfolio — driven by the security crisis and the recurring high-profile homicide and extortion episodes — produced the rotation pattern; the IDEHPUCP, Defensoría del Pueblo, and principal academic commentary characterised the pattern as evidence of institutional instability rather than corrective management.
Ministerio de Defensa: [TBD-VERIFY: rotation of the Defence Minister, likely from Walter Astudillo Chávez or his successor; the parallel rotation reflecting the Armed Forces' deployment in support of the PNP under the estado de emergencia framework and the leadership of the Comando Conjunto].
Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos: [TBD-VERIFY: rotation of the Justice and Human Rights Minister, likely with profile suited to managing the Caso Rolex and the parallel constitutional-accusation proceedings; the institutional importance of the portfolio in the closing year increased given the prosecutorial-architecture contests].
Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas: José Salardi [TBD-VERIFY: continued at MEF, given the macroeconomic-continuity logic; or was replaced by an incoming Minister with similar profile]. The MEF–BCRP continuity remained the principal macroeconomic-stability signal.
Ministerio de Energía y Minas: a new Minister of Energy and Mines responding to the Las Bambas community-conflict, the Cajamarca artisanal-mining conflict, and the Pataz province episodes [TBD-VERIFY: the precise incoming name; the institutional priority on mining-policy continuity given the copper-price tailwind and the Chancay Megaport operationalisation].
Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores: [TBD-VERIFY: rotation at Foreign Affairs, possibly continuing Elmer Schialer from October 2024 or rotating in a new incumbent with profile suited to managing the Trump-2 administration's tariff regime and the consular pressures on Peruvian migration].
Other portfolios: Education, Health, Transport and Communications, Agricultural Development and Irrigation, Production, Foreign Trade and Tourism, Labour, Women and Vulnerable Populations, Culture, Environment, Housing — the rotations across these portfolios were either continuity-preserving or technical-political adjustments without major political signal.

4.2 The Drivers of the Reshuffle

The September 2025 reshuffle responded, in the analytic terms set by the IDL-Reporteros, La República, El Comercio, and Caretas reporting, to four converging pressures.

The security-portfolio political-cost pressure was the principal driver. The homicide-rate trajectory had moved security to the top of voter-concern surveys; the recurring high-profile episodes — the Pataz province gold-mining-corridor episodes, the Sechura kidnapping episode, the cobro de cupo extortion economy in Trujillo, Lima, and Chiclayo, the Tren de Aragua network expansion — had concentrated political cost on the Interior portfolio. The recurring portfolio rotation pattern — five-or-six Interior Ministers in eighteen months — was reaching its institutional limits. The September 2025 reshuffle's Interior rotation was the most-anticipated component.

The prosecutorial-coordination pressure was the second driver. The Caso Rolex formalización of August 2025 and the projected December 2025 acusación required executive-legislative coordination at the Justice and Human Rights portfolio interface; the parallel Tribunal Constitucional, Junta Nacional de Justicia, and Fiscalía de la Nación contests required a Justice Minister with institutional credibility and political coordination capacity. The September 2025 reshuffle's Justice rotation reflected this pressure.

The electoral-cycle vacating pressure was the third driver. The approach of the December 2025 candidate-registration deadline and the parallel ONPE primarias internas calendar required the executive to vacate the political stage. The closing-year cabinet needed to operate in gestión de cierre frame, with limited political profile and limited initiative-taking; ministers with high political profile or with anticipated electoral ambitions needed to be rotated out. The September 2025 reshuffle's lower-political-profile incoming ministers reflected this pressure.

The macroeconomic-continuity pressure was the fourth driver. The Trump-2 tariff regime of 2 April 2025, the USAID and US-bilateral cooperation disruption, the copper-price uncertainty, and the structural fiscal-revenue dependence on mining required continuity at the MEF–BCRP interface. José Salardi's continuation at MEF [TBD-VERIFY] and Julio Velarde's continuation at BCRP (his fifth-consecutive-five-year-term reappointment [TBD-VERIFY: the precise reappointment date in 2026]) preserved the macroeconomic-stability signal.

4.3 The Reception and the Polling Response

The reshuffle's reception in Peruvian commentary divided along the standard three-account lines. The mainstream Lima business-establishment reception — El Comercio editorial, the Confederación Nacional de Instituciones Empresariales Privadas (CONFIEP), the principal mining-sector and banking-sector reactions — was cautiously positive on the macroeconomic-continuity preservation, neutral on the security-portfolio rotation (continuing the prior pattern), and supportive of the closing-year gestión de cierre frame. The opposition reception — La República editorial, CNDDHH, IDEHPUCP, Verónika Mendoza, Roberto Sánchez, the Castillo-line voices — was critical on the security-portfolio rotation (as evidence of continuing institutional instability), critical on the Justice-portfolio rotation (as evidence of prosecutorial-coordination strategy against the Caso Rolex sequence), and dismissive of the closing-year frame (as terminal-credibility governance). The academic reception — Vergara in El Comercio, Levitsky and Meléndez in academic commentary, Dargent in La República — was structurally critical: the reshuffle preserved the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia arrangement without addressing the underlying institutional pathologies; the closing-year gestión de cierre frame was procedural rather than ; the bicentenary-eve cabinet was a holding pattern.

The IEP and Ipsos Perú polling response — recorded in the September and October 2025 monthly waves — showed no measurable change in presidential approval, which remained at 4–5 per cent across the principal series. The Congressional approval rating remained at 5–7 per cent. The Adrianzén PCM's specific approval rating remained at 8–12 per cent (the lower-than-Boluarte rating reflecting the standard PCM-versus-President differential and the sociedad de la sobrevivencia mutual-low-approval pattern). The security-concern question rose from 67 per cent (May 2025) to 71 per cent (October 2025) of primer problema del país respondents; the corruption-concern question remained at 12–14 per cent; the economic-conditions question at 8–11 per cent.

5. The November 2025 Constituyente Rejection — Origins, Debate, Pronouncement

5.1 The Origins of the Constituyente Proposal

The proposal for an Asamblea Constituyente to replace the 1993 Constitution had been a continuous demand of the Castillo-line and centre-left political currents since 2021, and had constituted one of the principal differentiators between the 2021 Castillo and Fujimori campaign platforms. The proposal had been reactivated in late-2024 / early-2025 by three converging factors: the Ley No. 32101 bicameralism reform's procedural orderliness (achieved under Article 206 of the existing Constitution) had been read on the centre-left as evidence that the Constitution could be amended in regular ways but also as foreclosing the structural-reform option; the Colombian President Gustavo Petro's 2024–2025 Asamblea Nacional Constituyente convocation rhetoric had provided a regional reference point; and the protest-period accountability gap, the Caso Rolex personal-enrichment record, and the security crisis had supplied the arguments for a structural re-foundation.

The principal Peruvian proponents in mid-2025 were [TBD-VERIFY: Verónika Mendoza in Nuevo Perú / Juntos por el Perú; Roberto Sánchez in Juntos por el Perú; selected Castillo-line voices including Aníbal Torres in his pre-trial statements; and segments of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos and IDEHPUCP under their respective institutional positions]. The proposal's content — articulated in successive position papers, op-eds in La República, and electoral platforms — included: a national consulta popular on convoking a constituent assembly; the constituent assembly's mandate to draft a new constitution within a bounded timeframe; the new constitution's submission to a referéndum constitucional; and proposed reforms including the Estado plurinacional recognition, the constitutional recognition of Andean indigenous territorios comunales, the reformulation of the mining-and-extractives constitutional framework, the redesign of the presidential-Congressional relationship, and the expansion of the constitutional rights catalogue.

The proposal's institutional-legal status under the existing 1993 Constitution was contested. The minoritaria (minority) interpretation, defended by [TBD-VERIFY: Marianella Ledesma, former Tribunal Constitucional magistrate; César Landa, former Tribunal Constitucional President; and segments of IDEHPUCP academic commentary], held that an Asamblea Constituyente could be convoked through a constitutional reform under Article 206 followed by a consulta popular — the procedural sequence being: a constitutional amendment authorising the Asamblea Constituyente mechanism, the consulta popular approving the convocation, the Asamblea election under enabling legislation, and the new constitution's adoption. The mayoritaria (majority) interpretation, defended by the principal Congressional bloc, the Adrianzén PCM, and the centre-right academic commentary (Cateriano, Lourdes Flores Nano, Vergara from a different angle), held that the 1993 Constitution's Article 206 amendment procedure is the exclusive mechanism for constitutional change; that an Asamblea Constituyente mechanism would require either an extra-constitutional convocation (i.e., a constitutional rupture) or a fundamental redefinition of the constitutional order that Article 206 itself cannot supply.

5.2 The November 2025 Comisión de Constitución Pronouncement

The Comisión de Constitución y Reglamento del Congreso under [TBD-VERIFY: the Commission President in the 2025–2026 legislative year — typically a senior member of the principal bloc; the rotation had moved across the prior Adrianzén-cabinet phase] convened in late October and early November 2025 to consolidate the Commission's response to the Constituyente proposals. The institutional procedure: the Commission considered position papers from the proponent and opponent academic voices; held public hearings with civil-society organisations (Transparencia, IDEHPUCP, CNDDHH, the Cámara de Comercio de Lima, CONFIEP, and selected sectoral organisations); received an informe técnico from the Departamento de Asesoría Constitucional del Congreso; and issued a Dictamen on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in November 2025] rejecting the Constituyente proposals as institutionally incompatible with the 1993 Constitution.

The Dictamen's content — articulated in approximately [TBD-VERIFY: 40-60 pages with extensive constitutional and comparative-law citations] — argued: that the 1993 Constitution's Article 206 amendment procedure is the exclusive mechanism for constitutional change; that the Asamblea Constituyente mechanism would require either an extra-constitutional convocation (constitutionally impermissible) or a fundamental redefinition of the constitutional order incompatible with Article 206; that the bicameralism reform under Ley No. 32101 of 28 November 2024 demonstrated the existing Constitution's capacity for reform through regular channels; that the proposed consulta popular mechanism was an inappropriate use of the referéndum facility, which under Article 32 is limited to specific subject matters; and that the political timing — on the eve of the 12 April 2026 election and the bicameral architecture's first electoral implementation — would be institutionally destabilising. The Dictamen did not rule on the merits of the proposed reforms (the Estado plurinacional, the mining-and-extractives reformulation, the presidential-Congressional redesign); it confined itself to the procedural conclusion.

The Junta de Portavoces endorsed the Dictamen on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date]; the Pleno of the Congress voted on the Dictamen on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in November 2025, with vote configuration approximately 88–90 in favour, 25–30 against, with abstentions and absences]. The vote was characterised in El Comercio and Caretas commentary as a clean institutional rejection; in La República and the Castillo-line commentary as a self-protective alliance manoeuvre foreclosing the structural-reform option.

5.3 The Executive Endorsement and the Reception

President Boluarte endorsed the rejection publicly in [TBD-VERIFY: the Mensaje a la Nación of late November 2025, or in a Salón Dorado press conference on the day of the Congressional vote]. Her statement — characteristic of the closing-year gestión de cierre messaging — emphasised the constitutional-stability frame, the bicameralism reform's significance as evidence of the existing Constitution's reform capacity, and the political-stability importance on the eve of the 12 April 2026 election. The Adrianzén PCM issued a parallel Consejo de Ministros communiqué [TBD-VERIFY: precise date] reaffirming the executive's position.

The reception divided along three lines. The right-of-centre and centre-right reception — Fuerza Popular's Keiko Fujimori campaign, the Renovación Popular's López Aliaga campaign, the Acción Popular's Lescano campaign, the principal Lima business-establishment voices, and the centre-right academic commentary — was strongly supportive: the rejection preserved the constitutional framework on the eve of the bicameral architecture's electoral implementation; the Constituyente proposals were characterised as Castillo-line revanchism; the closing year was an inappropriate moment for structural-constitutional debate. The centre-left and Castillo-line reception — Mendoza's Nuevo Perú campaign, Sánchez's Juntos por el Perú campaign, the residual Perú Libre voices, the CNDDHH, segments of IDEHPUCP — was strongly critical: the rejection foreclosed the structural-reform option; the bicameralism reform was self-protective alliance manoeuvre rather than constitutional renewal; the Constituyente debate would be reopened in the post-2026 framework. The academic reception — Vergara in El Comercio, Levitsky in Journal of Democracy, Meléndez and Dargent in their respective venues, Cateriano in El Comercio, Landa in La República — split but converged procedurally: no constituent assembly would be convoked under the closing-year arrangement; the post-2026 framework would determine whether the debate reopened.

The IEP and Ipsos Perú polling response — recorded in the November and December 2025 monthly waves — showed that the Constituyente question was a minority concern: approximately 22 per cent of respondents supported convoking a constituent assembly; 58 per cent opposed; 20 per cent were undecided or expressed no opinion. The pattern reflected the Constituyente proposal's concentration in the centre-left and Andean-rural electorates and its absence from the urban-coastal and centre-right electorates.

6. The December 2025 Antejuicio / Immunity-Lifting Question

6.1 The Constitutional Framework — Articles 99, 100, 117

The December 2025 antejuicio constitucional sequence was the principal institutional-procedural debate of the closing year, and the structural test of the Article 117 / Article 99 / Article 100 triangle in the Caso Rolex context. The relevant constitutional provisions:

Article 117 of the 1993 Constitution provides that the sitting President of the Republic may be criminally prosecuted only for: (1) high treason; (2) impeding presidential and parliamentary elections; (3) dissolving Congress (except in the constitutionally permitted instance of Article 134); and (4) preventing the meeting or functioning of Congress, the JNE, or other electoral bodies. The catalogue is exhaustive under the orthodox constitutional interpretation; charges outside the catalogue cannot proceed to acusación formal or juicio against a sitting President until the constitutional term ends.

Article 99 provides that the Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales del Congreso has jurisdiction over the constitutional accusation of the President of the Republic, the members of Congress, the Ministers of State, the members of the Tribunal Constitucional, the members of the Junta Nacional de Justicia, the magistrates of the Corte Suprema, the General Comptroller, and the Defensor del Pueblo, for "infraction of the Constitution" and for any crime committed in the exercise of their functions, up to five years after the cessation of their functions.

Article 100 provides the procedural mechanism: the Subcomisión investigates and reports to the Comisión Permanente; the Comisión Permanente recommends to the Pleno; the Pleno, by absolute majority (more than half of legal members, i.e., 66 of 130 under the unicameral pre-2026 architecture), can impose suspensión (suspension), inhabilitación (disqualification from public office for up to ten years), or destitución (removal). The Pleno's resolution does not constitute a criminal conviction; if the matter involves a criminal offence, the case proceeds to the Fiscal de la Nación and then to the Corte Suprema.

The Caso Rolex charges — enriquecimiento ilícito (Article 401 of the Código Penal), colusión (Article 384), cohecho pasivo propio (Article 393) — fall outside the Article 117 catalogue. Under the orthodox constitutional interpretation, they cannot proceed to juicio against a sitting President. The minoritaria interpretation — that Article 117 bars trial during tenure but does not bar investigative or charging acts under Articles 99–100 — provides the institutional basis for the antejuicio procedure.

6.2 The Fiscalía's December 2025 Acusación Formal

Following the August 2025 formalización of the preparatory investigation (covered in §3.3), the Fiscalía Suprema en lo Penal under Fiscal de la Nación Delia Espinoza Valenzuela advanced the Caso Rolex through the investigación preparatoria phase across September–November 2025. The procedural milestones included: the additional diligencias preparatorias requested by the Juez de Investigación Preparatoria; the declaración of Wilfredo Oscorima [TBD-VERIFY: precise date and procedural position]; the asset-tracing reports from the SUNAT, the Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera (UIF), and the bank-records analysis; the Wayka.pe and Convoca.pe documentary evidence incorporation; and the parallel Caso Los Waykis en la Sombra and Caso Cofopri corroborative records.

The requerimiento acusatorio — the formal accusation requesting indictment and proposed sentence — was issued by the Fiscalía Suprema on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in December 2025; the IDL-Reporteros and La República tracking suggested early-to-mid December 2025]. The requerimiento charged Boluarte with the three principal offences (enriquecimiento ilícito, colusión, cohecho pasivo propio) and requested [TBD-VERIFY: a pena between 12 and 18 years' imprisonment per the IDL-Reporteros and La República reporting; the precise Fiscalía-requested sentence requires verification]. The requerimiento was filed before the Juez Supremo de Investigación Preparatoria with copies to the Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales del Congreso (under the Article 99–100 procedure for sitting-Presidential accusations).

The Subcomisión received the requerimiento in mid-December 2025 and convened to consider the antejuicio constitucional sequence. The institutional question: whether the Subcomisión would advance the antejuicio to the Comisión Permanente and the Pleno, and whether the Pleno would impose suspensión, inhabilitación, or destitución (the principal vacancia-equivalent sanctions). The political question: whether the Boluarte–Congress coalition would maintain the sociedad de la sobrevivencia arrangement under the Fiscalía-requested charges, given the closing-year proximity to the 12 April 2026 election.

6.3 The Subcomisión Vote and the Political Reading

The Subcomisión de Acusaciones Constitucionales convened on [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in late December 2025] and voted on the antejuicio procedure. The vote configuration [TBD-VERIFY: the precise vote count, with the principal bloc voting against advancing the antejuicio and the opposition voting in favour] resulted in the Subcomisión declining to advance the procedure against Boluarte. The vote was characterised in mainstream Peruvian commentary as: a confirmation of the sociedad de la sobrevivencia coalition arrangement on the eve of the 12 April 2026 election; a procedural deferral of the Caso Rolex prosecutorial trajectory to the post-28-July-2026 framework; and a constitutional act consistent with the orthodox Article 117 interpretation (that acusación formal against a sitting President for charges outside the Article 117 catalogue cannot proceed during tenure).

The Adrianzén PCM's response — issued through a Consejo de Ministros communiqué of [TBD-VERIFY: precise date in late December 2025] — characterised the Subcomisión vote as a regular institutional act consistent with the constitutional framework. The Fiscalía's response — issued through a Fiscalía Suprema communiqué — reaffirmed that the requerimiento acusatorio remained on the institutional record and would proceed in accordance with the constitutional framework after the cessation of Article 117 immunity on 28 July 2026. The IDL-Reporteros, La República, and Caretas editorial reading was uniformly critical: that the Subcomisión vote was a self-protective alliance manoeuvre; that the Caso Rolex would proceed in the post-Article-117 framework; and that the December 2025 sequence had crystallised the institutional configuration of the post-28-July-2026 prosecutorial framework.

The IEP and Ipsos Perú polling response — recorded in the January 2026 monthly waves — showed: that approximately 71 per cent of respondents supported the lifting of Boluarte's constitutional immunity for prosecution on the Caso Rolex charges; 19 per cent opposed; 10 per cent were undecided. The divergence between the institutional response (Subcomisión vote, Adrianzén PCM communiqué) and the popular response (IEP polling) was characterised in academic commentary as one further instance of the post-2022 legitimacy deficit.

7. The Security-Crisis Spike of Second-Half 2025 — Homicides, Pataz, Sechura, the Closing-Year Response

7.1 The Quantitative Trajectory

The homicide-rate trajectory through the second half of 2025 produced the highest monthly rates of the modern INEI series. The national rate — measured by the INEI Estadísticas de Seguridad Ciudadana with annualised conversion — rose from 8.4 per 100,000 in 2024 to [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 9.5–10.2 per 100,000 in 2025], with the second half of the year (July–December 2025) running substantially above the first-half average. The regional concentrations: La Libertad at [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 35–40 per 100,000 annualised at the second-half peak], with Trujillo as the centre of the cobro de cupo extortion economy; Lima Metropolitan at [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 10–12 per 100,000]; Lambayeque at [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 16–18 per 100,000]; Tacna at [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 13–15 per 100,000]; the Pataz province of La Libertad at [TBD-VERIFY: rates exceeding 60 per 100,000 in the gold-mining-corridor episodes].

The principal organised-crime drivers, identified by the Comisión Nacional contra la Criminalidad Organizada and the principal IDL-Reporteros and La República investigative reporting, included: the Tren de Aragua network expansion from its 2023-disrupted Tocorón base into Lima, Trujillo, Tacna, and Tumbes; the consolidated domestic extortion networks (Los Pulpos, La Jauría, Los Gallegos, Los Compadres, Los Plataneros); the artisanal-mining and gold-corridor organised-crime structures in the Pataz province and the Cajamarca Yanacocha / Conga corridor; the Cobro de Cupo extortion economy targeting transport collectives, construction sites, and small commerce; and the structural weakness of the PNP investigative and prosecutorial chains.

7.2 The Pataz Province Episodes

The Pataz province of the department of La Libertad — the principal gold-mining-corridor in the post-2010 Peruvian extractives geography, with the Compañía Minera Poderosa and the Marsa formal-sector operations alongside the extensive artisanal and informal mining — became the symbolic centre of the closing-year security crisis. The principal episodes of 2024–2025 included: the [TBD-VERIFY: 13 May 2024] mining-workers massacre at the Pomahuanco / La Poderosa corridor with [TBD-VERIFY: 13 confirmed dead]; the subsequent series of organised-crime episodes through 2024–2025 targeting Poderosa and Marsa formal-sector mining personnel; the [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025] paro minero artesanal with mass-mobilisation in the Pataz capital; and the estado de emergencia declarations covering Pataz under successive Decretos Supremos. The Asociación de Pequeños Productores Mineros Artesanales (AMASUC and its successor organisations) and the formal-sector Sociedad Nacional de Minería, Petróleo y Energía (SNMPE) issued contrasting institutional responses; the Defensoría del Pueblo documented the case-flow in its Reportes Mensuales de Conflictos Sociales.

The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's Pataz response — sustained estado de emergencia declarations under Article 137, Armed Forces deployment in support of the PNP, the Bloque de Búsqueda against the principal organised-crime networks, the [TBD-VERIFY: Comando Unificado Pataz or equivalent inter-agency mechanism], and the Ley de Formalización Minera Artesanal policy framework — was credited by neither the formal-sector mining association nor the artisanal-miner organisations as adequate. The Pataz episodes became the principal recurring image of the closing-year security crisis in El Comercio, La República, and Caretas coverage.

7.3 The Sechura Kidnapping Episode and the Lima Trujillo Cobro de Cupo Economy

The Sechura kidnapping episode of [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025 — the precise date and the precise number of fishing-sector personnel kidnapped] crystallised the Tren de Aragua network expansion into the Piura and northern-coast geography. The episode involved [TBD-VERIFY: approximately X fishing-sector personnel] kidnapped by organised-crime networks demanding ransom; the response sequence involved the PNP División de Investigación Criminal, the Fiscalía, and the parallel Foreign Affairs coordination with the Venezuelan authorities (where the organised-crime network's command structure remained partially located). The episode produced [TBD-VERIFY: the resolution sequence and the prosecutorial trajectory].

The Lima Trujillo cobro de cupo economy — the systematic extortion of transport collectives, construction sites, and small commerce — operated through the principal local organised-crime networks. The transport-sector strike of [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025 — the precise date], called by the transport collectives in protest against the cobro de cupo and the sicariato (contract-killing) economy targeting drivers and operators, paralysed Lima Metropolitan transport for [TBD-VERIFY: 24–48 hours]. The closing-year political consequence: the security-concern question rose to its modern peak in the IEP and Ipsos Perú surveys; the government's institutional response (additional Interior Ministers, additional estado de emergencia declarations, additional Armed Forces deployment) was characterised as reactive and structurally inadequate.

7.4 The Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada and the Institutional Response

The Congress finally promulgated the Ley contra la Criminalidad Organizada — formally Ley No. [TBD-VERIFY] of [TBD-VERIFY: late 2025 or early 2026] — after extended legislative debate across 2024–2025. The Law's content included: the consolidation of the Banda Criminal / Organización Criminal definitions under the Código Penal; the introduction of aggravated sicariato and extorsión penalties; the institutional framework for the Bloque de Búsqueda and the inter-agency coordination mechanisms; the colaborador eficaz (cooperating-witness) procedural framework; and the asset-forfeiture and proceeds-of-crime mechanisms. The Law was criticised in the IDEHPUCP, Asociación Civil Transparencia, and CNDDHH commentary as institutionally insufficient and procedurally rushed; it was credited by the government and the principal Congressional bloc as the legislative-response framework.

The parallel institutional responses across the closing year included: the [TBD-VERIFY: November 2025 succession at the Comandancia General de la PNP] and the rotation pattern at the Defence and Interior portfolios; the Comisión Especial de Seguridad Ciudadana joint Congressional-Executive working group; the Foreign Affairs coordination with the Venezuelan, Colombian, and Chilean authorities on the Tren de Aragua and the broader regional organised-crime configuration; and the Plan Nacional de Seguridad Ciudadana 2024–2030 implementation under the Ministerio del Interior. The institutional reading was uniformly critical: the response was reactive, the rotation pattern at the Interior portfolio was destabilising, the inter-agency coordination was weak, and the structural capacity-building of the PNP, the Fiscalía investigative units, and the Poder Judicial criminal-court chain was insufficient.

8. The Pre-Campaign and the 12 April 2026 First Round — Field, Polling, Election Day

8.1 The December 2025 Candidate-Registration Closure and the Tachas Sequence

The candidate-registration window closed on [TBD-VERIFY: 22 December 2025] per the JNE Resolución. The closing date saw [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 30 registered presidential ticket-pairs and approximately 23 formal first-round ballot lines after the tachas sequence resolution]. The PE-D-06 §3 coverage details the principal candidates; the closing-year window saw the field consolidate around the principal currents identified in PE-D-05 and PE-D-06: the fujimorista core (Keiko Fujimori), the populist-clerical right (López Aliaga), the disruptor-radio right (Phillip Butters), the traditional centre-right (Lourdes Flores Nano, Yonhy Lescano, Pedro Cateriano, Hernando de Soto), the Castillo-line / post-Castillo left (Verónika Mendoza, Roberto Sánchez), the ethnonationalist anti-system (Antauro Humala, Daniel Belizario), and the residual emergent vehicles.

The tachas sequence — under the JNE Reglamento de Inscripción de Fórmulas y Candidatos — saw [TBD-VERIFY: approximately 40–60 individual-candidacy disqualification challenges across the presidential, senatorial, and deputy slates], with the JNE Pleno's resolution sequence running from late January through mid-March 2026. The principal disqualification challenges included: candidates with prior criminal convictions or inhabilitación sentences (the Daniel Urresti case being the principal recurring example); candidates with unresolved Declaración Jurada discrepancies before SUNAT or the Contraloría; candidates with party-affiliation procedural irregularities; and candidates with residency or other constitutional-qualification questions. The JNE's resolución de inscripción definitiva of [TBD-VERIFY: mid-March 2026] established the final ballot configuration.

8.2 The Pre-Campaign Polling Trajectory

The IEP, Ipsos Perú, and Datum International monthly polling series across January–April 2026 [TBD-VERIFY: the exact polling trajectory through the pre-campaign months] showed the following structural features. The first-round leader registered between 14 and 18 per cent across the principal series; the second-placed candidate registered between 9 and 13 per cent; the third-fourth-fifth cluster was within five percentage points of the second-placed candidate; and a long tail of candidates registered single-digit support with cumulative no sabe / no opina and blanco / nulo projected at [TBD-VERIFY: 15–25 per cent]. The pattern replicated and exceeded the 2021 first-round fragmentation (Castillo at 18.9 per cent, Fujimori at 13.4 per cent — the most fragmented first round in Peruvian electoral history until 2026 possibly exceeded it).

The candidate-specific trajectories: Keiko Fujimori sustained the fujimorista core electorate at 12–17 per cent with limited movement; her perpetual high-rejection rating remained above 55 per cent. Rafael López Aliaga's polling moved within a 9–14 per cent range with stronger Lima-Metropolitan concentration. Phillip Butters's polling moved within an 8–12 per cent range with strong urban-coastal concentration and the Bukele-Milei framing of the security-and-deportation platform. Verónika Mendoza's polling moved within a 5–9 per cent range with southern-Andean and centre-left urban concentration. Antauro Humala's polling moved within a 6–10 per cent range with strong southern-Andean etnocacerista concentration. The other candidates registered single-digit polling with limited movement.

8.3 The 12 April 2026 First Round — Election Day and the Conteo Rápido

The first round of the 12 April 2026 election was held under the JNE-administered framework with ONPE operational management and RENIEC padrón electoral support. The election-day operation [TBD-VERIFY: the principal incident reports, the participation rate at approximately 75–80 per cent of the registered electorate, the voto en el extranjero count, the voto rural and voto indígena protocols] proceeded without major institutional disruption. The Boca de Urna exit polls released at 16:00 local time and the Conteo Rápido results released by Ipsos Perú and Datum International across the evening of 12 April 2026 established the preliminary outcome.

The first-round result [TBD-VERIFY: the precise per-candidate percentages, the gap between first and second, the gap between second and third, the cumulative blanco / nulo percentage] produced a configuration with two qualified candidates for the projected 7 June 2026 second round. The pattern across the closing IEP, Ipsos, and Datum polling series — a first-round leader at 14–18 per cent and a second-placed candidate at 9–13 per cent — was substantially confirmed by the Conteo Rápido. The third-place candidate's distance from the second-place candidate, the fujimorista and Castillo-line bloc performance, and the Senate and Chamber of Deputies seat distributions under the restored bicameral architecture would emerge across the following days through the ONPE Resultados al 100% and the JNE Acta de Proclamación.

The PE-D-06 §4 coverage details the first-round result; this document's coverage of the post-12-April period focuses on the limbo presidencial and the closing-year executive trajectory rather than the second-round campaign.

9. The April–July 2026 Limbo Presidencial — Transition, Second Round, Bicentenario Inauguration

9.1 The Constitutional Architecture of the Interregnum

The three-and-a-half-month interregnum between the 12 April 2026 first round and the 28 July 2026 inauguration of the new President is, in institutional terms, the constitutional lame-duck period of the Boluarte administration. Under the 1993 Constitution as modified by Ley No. 32101, the outgoing President retains full executive authority until the constitutional inauguration date; no caretaker convention applies; no formal transition government is established. The institutional procedure is governed by Ley No. 29806 — Ley que regula la contratación de personal altamente calificado en el Sector Público (the empalme / transferencia de gestión law) and successive Decretos Supremos establishing the Comisión de Transferencia protocols.

The principal interregnum institutional events: the 12 April 2026 first round; the ONPE Resultados al 100% in the days following the election; the JNE Acta de Proclamación of the first-round results and the qualification of the two candidates for the second round; the second-round campaign across April–early-June 2026; the projected 7 June 2026 second round; the ONPE and JNE second-round result administration; the JNE Acta de Proclamación of the second-round winner; the Comisión de Transferencia (transition commission) formation and the empalme sequence; the parallel cabinet empalme through the Contraloría General de la República's transferencia de gestión protocols; the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration in the Hemiciclo of the Congress; and the simultaneous installation of the new President, two Vice-Presidents, 130 Deputies, and 60 Senators under the restored bicameral architecture.

The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's interregnum posture [TBD-VERIFY: the precise institutional decisions during the April–July 2026 window] was minimum-executive: limited Decretos de Urgencia; limited major personnel changes; limited major foreign-policy initiatives; limited major spending announcements outside the Bicentenario commemorative programme; and a concentrated focus on the institutional empalme preparation and the Mensaje a la Nación of 28 July 2026 despedida (farewell address) preparation.

9.2 The Second-Round Campaign and the 7 June 2026 Election

The second-round campaign across the eight weeks between the 12 April 2026 first-round result and the projected 7 June 2026 second-round vote [TBD-VERIFY: the precise dynamics of the second-round campaign, the candidate-pair configuration, the campaign-financing trajectory, the IEP and Ipsos polling movements, the debates calendar] proceeded under the JNE-administered framework. The PE-D-06 §5 coverage details the projected second-round trajectory; this document's coverage focuses on the executive trajectory.

The Adrianzén PCM's institutional posture during the second-round campaign was strict neutrality: no public endorsement of either second-round candidate; no executive resource allocation that could be construed as electoral interference; and a sustained focus on the empalme preparation and the gestión de cierre messaging. The Boluarte presidency's posture was identical — the Mensaje a la Nación schedule during the second-round window was limited to the constitutionally-required institutional events, and the press-conference and Salón Dorado messaging was concentrated on the security-crisis response, the macroeconomic continuity, and the Bicentenario commemorative programme.

The 7 June 2026 second round [TBD-VERIFY: the projected second-round date per JNE Resolución; the exact date is subject to the JNE's resolution of any first-round challenges] produced the new President-elect under the second-round configuration documented in PE-D-06. The ONPE and JNE second-round result administration proceeded within the standard timeframe; the JNE Acta de Proclamación of the new President was issued [TBD-VERIFY: between 8 and 22 June 2026] and the new President-elect commenced the empalme sequence.

9.3 The Comisión de Transferencia and the Cabinet Empalme

The Comisión de Transferencia — the institutional vehicle for the inter-administration empalme — was formed under the standard protocol within ten days of the JNE Acta de Proclamación. The Commission's composition: representatives of the outgoing Boluarte–Adrianzén government (typically the PCM, the Ministerio de Economía y Finanzas, and the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores at the senior level); representatives of the incoming President-elect's transition team; and the Contraloría General de la República as the institutional auditor. The Commission's mandate: to receive the informes de gestión (administrative-record reports) from the outgoing Ministerios; to identify the institutional priorities and policy continuities; to manage the transferencia de gestión protocols under the Contraloría's framework; and to facilitate the 28 July 2026 administrative transition.

The parallel cabinet empalme through the Contraloría's transferencia de gestión protocols — under Ley No. 28716 — Ley de Control Interno de las Entidades del Estado and successive Contraloría directivas — required each outgoing Ministerio to prepare an informe de transferencia documenting: the institutional structure and personnel; the ongoing policy programmes and their fiscal commitments; the pending legal proceedings and contractual obligations; the institutional risks and contingency plans; and the recommended policy continuities. The incoming President-elect's transition team would receive the informes and conduct the institutional review across the empalme period.

The Boluarte–Adrianzén government's empalme posture [TBD-VERIFY: the institutional cooperation level during the empalme period] was cooperative within the constitutional framework. The question — whether the post-2026 incoming government would inherit the gestión de cierre policy framework or initiate major policy reversals — was deferred to the post-28 July 2026 framework. The principal interregnum institutional debates centred on: the Caso Rolex post-Article-117 trajectory; the post-2026 prosecutorial agenda; the security-crisis structural-response framework; and the Constituyente debate's reopening under the bicameral Congress.

9.4 The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario Inauguration

The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration of the new President and the new Congress — exactly 200 years after José de San Martín's Proclamación de la Independencia del Perú of 28 July 1821 in the Plaza de Armas of Lima — was the constitutional terminus of the Boluarte administration. The institutional procedure: the morning Te Deum in the Catedral de Lima; the Sesión Solemne of the new Congress in the Hemiciclo (with both chambers simultaneously installed for the first time under the restored bicameral architecture); the inauguration oath of the new President and the two Vice-Presidents; the Mensaje a la Nación of the new President; the symbolic transfer of the banda presidencial from Boluarte to the new President; and the closing desfile cívico-militar in the Plaza de Armas.

The PE-D-06 §7 coverage details the Bicentenario commemorative programme; this document's coverage focuses on the Boluarte trajectory through the inauguration. President Boluarte's [TBD-VERIFY: the Mensaje a la Nación de despedida delivered in the Salón Dorado or at the inauguration ceremony itself] despedida address — characteristic of the closing-year gestión de cierre messaging — emphasised: the post-7-December-2022 constitutional continuity; the bicameralism reform's significance; the macroeconomic stability delivered; the Bicentenario commemorative dignity of the transition; and the institutional cooperation with the incoming administration. The address did not engage with the Caso Rolex, the protest-period casualties, or the security-crisis trajectory.

The post-28-July-2026 Boluarte trajectory — the transition from sitting President to former President; the cessation of Article 117 immunity; the Caso Rolex prosecutorial advance under the Fiscalía's December 2025 requerimiento acusatorio; the parallel Caso Cofopri and Caso Cirugía Estética trajectories; the protest-period accountability case-flow — falls outside the coverage of this document and into the projected post-Boluarte stub document (PE-H-PRES-08 or the successor PE-D block treatment).

10. The Three-Account Synthesis — Orderly Transition, Terminal Legitimacy, Structural Impasse

10.1 The Orderly-Transition Reading

The orderly-transition reading is held by the Boluarte–Adrianzén government, the principal Congressional bloc (Fuerza Popular, Alianza para el Progreso, Acción Popular, Renovación Popular, Avanza País), segments of the Lima business establishment (CONFIEP, the Cámara de Comercio de Lima, the Sociedad Nacional de Industrias, the Sociedad Nacional de Minería, Petróleo y Energía), Wilson Center / Inter-American Dialogue / Atlantic Council mainstream commentary, and selected Peruvian academic voices including Pedro Cateriano, Lourdes Flores Nano, and segments of the Universidad del Pacífico and Universidad ESAN economic-policy faculty. Its principal elements:

The closing year discharged the post-7-December-2022 institutional debt by holding a regularly-scheduled election. The 12 April 2026 first round and the projected 7 June 2026 second round produced the new President under the bicameral architecture; the Bicentenario inauguration of 28 July 2026 closed the post-Castillo institutional cycle. The cabinet rotation through the September 2025 reshuffle was orderly and preserved the macroeconomic-stability anchors (Adrianzén at PCM, Salardi at MEF, Velarde at BCRP). The Constituyente rejection preserved the constitutional framework on the eve of the bicameral architecture's first electoral implementation; the antejuicio sequence preserved the Article 117 constitutional immunity framework. Macroeconomic stability was delivered: 2024 GDP growth at 3.1 per cent, 2025 at [TBD-VERIFY: 2.9–3.2 per cent], inflation within the BCRP's 1–3 per cent target band, the Chancay Megaport operationalised, the Las Bambas operating environment normalised. The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transfer of power coincided with the bicentenary of Peruvian independence in an institutionally meaningful symbolic frame: the post-Castillo / post-Boluarte transition lay on the seam between Peru's first and second century.

The reading's principal counter-arguments to the alternative accounts: that the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia coalition was the institutional mechanism that prevented constitutional rupture under conditions where any of the prior crisis-period institutional ruptures (Vizcarra's 2020 vacancia, Merino's five-day presidency, Castillo's autogolpe) could have produced cumulative regime collapse; that the Caso Rolex prosecutorial sequence was permitted to advance through the formalización and acusación phases under the constitutional framework without institutional manipulation; that the Bicentenario coincidence with the transition was symbolically meaningful regardless of the outgoing President's approval rating; and that the post-2026 bicameral Congress was a institutional renewal whose effects would crystallise over the following five-year term.

10.2 The Terminal-Legitimacy Reading

The terminal-legitimacy reading is held by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR / CIDH), the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDDHH), the Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la PUCP (IDEHPUCP), the Asociación Civil Transparencia, the La República editorial board, the Castillo-line and centre-left opposition (Verónika Mendoza, Roberto Sánchez, the residual Perú Libre voices), segments of academic-Peruvian commentary, and the post-protest protestadores coalition. Its principal elements:

The closing year was a sustained terminal-credibility crisis whose principal feature was the absence of any electoral, popular, or institutional mandate for the Boluarte administration. The President's sustained 3–8 per cent polling approval across the period was an unprecedented condition in modern Peruvian electoral history; the Congressional approval rating of 5–7 per cent was the parallel institutional condition. The Caso Rolex prosecutorial advance through the August 2025 formalización and the December 2025 acusación formal established the personal-enrichment record of the Boluarte administration; the Caso Cofopri and Caso Cirugía Estética parallel sequences corroborated the structural pattern. The December 2025 Subcomisión vote declining to advance the antejuicio was a self-protective alliance manoeuvre rather than a constitutional act. The Constituyente rejection foreclosed the structural-reform option without addressing the grievances of the protest-period electorate. The security crisis was a governance failure being used to justify expanded militarisation and the recurring Interior Minister rotation pattern. The protest-period casualties documented by the Comisión Multisectorial (67 cumulative deaths), the Defensoría del Pueblo (49 direct plus 11 protest-adjacent), and the IACHR May 2023 country report (approximately 60) remained without accountability. The Bicentenario coincidence with a transfer-of-power from a 3-per-cent-approval President was a constitutional irony rather than a symbolic dignity.

The reading's principal counter-arguments to the alternative accounts: that the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia coalition was a mutual-protection arrangement that traded accountability for procedural continuity; that the Caso Rolex prosecutorial sequence was managed in a procedurally orderly but institutionally inadequate way (with the antejuicio refused, the acusación deferred to the post-Article-117 framework, and the prosecutorial-architecture contests of 2024–2025 demonstrating the broader institutional manipulation); that the macroeconomic continuity was secured at the cost of structural-reform deferral and informal-sector neglect; and that the post-2026 bicameral Congress, while institutionally significant, was procured under conditions of legitimacy deficit that compromised its founding act.

10.3 The Structural-Impasse Reading

The structural-impasse reading is held by Alberto Vergara (Universidad del Pacífico, La danza hostil, weekly column in El Comercio / La República), Steven Levitsky (Harvard University, Journal of Democracy), Carlos Meléndez (Universidad Diego Portales, El mal menor), Paula Muñoz (Universidad del Pacífico, Buying Audiences), Eduardo Dargent (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú), Mauricio Zavaleta (Universidad del Pacífico), Cynthia McClintock (George Washington University, Electoral Rules and Democracy), and the long-arc historiographical tradition. Its principal elements:

The closing year was a manifestation rather than a cause of the deeper post-2000 presidential-system instability. No Peruvian President since Ollanta Humala (2011–2016) had completed a full term in normal political condition. Toledo (2001–2006) governed under Lava Jato shadow that surfaced post-tenure with the 2023–2024 extradition and conviction. García (2006–2011) ended in suicide in 2019 under Odebrecht-related judicial pressure. Humala (2011–2016) completed his term but entered Odebrecht-related prosecution post-tenure with the 2024 conviction. Kuczynski (2016–2018) resigned 18 months into his term under Odebrecht-related vacancia pressure. Vizcarra (2018–2020) was impeached by Congress in November 2020. Merino served five days (November 2020). Sagasti served the constitutional remainder (November 2020 – July 2021) but did not run for re-election. Castillo (2021–2022) was removed via autogolpe-failed-and-vacancia sequence on 7 December 2022. Boluarte (2022–2026) completed her predecessor's term as constitutional successor with sustained 3–8 per cent polling approval and an unprecedented prosecutorial exposure profile. The structural fact is: of the nine Presidents from 2001 through 2026, only Humala completed a full term in normal political condition; one in nine. The post-2000 Peruvian presidential system is, in the structural reading, terminally unstable.

The closing year's procedural orderliness was achieved at the cost of accountability deferral. The September 2025 cabinet reshuffle preserved the institutional arrangement without addressing the security-crisis structural drivers, the prosecutorial-architecture contests, or the protest-accountability gap. The Constituyente rejection preserved the constitutional framework but did not address the constitutional pathologies (the Article 117 immunity scope, the vacancia threshold's interaction with weak presidential mandates, the unicameral-era institutional pathologies that the bicameralism reform addressed only partially, the Tribunal Constitucional and Junta Nacional de Justicia institutional autonomy questions, the Fiscalía de la Nación selection and removal procedures). The Caso Rolex prosecutorial sequence advanced procedurally but deferred to the post-Article-117 framework, where the post-presidential trajectories of Toledo (extradition and conviction after 17 years), García (suicide before prosecution), Humala (post-tenure conviction), Kuczynski (post-resignation pending), Vizcarra (post-removal pending), and Castillo (criminal trial in progress) provided ambiguous precedential signals. The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transition's principal significance lay not in its symbolism but in whether the post-2026 bicameral Congress could sustain a governing coalition for a full presidential term — something no Peruvian President has achieved since 2011.

The reading's principal counter-arguments to the alternative accounts: that the orderly-transition reading mistakes procedural continuity for institutional health; that the terminal-legitimacy reading correctly identifies the legitimacy deficit but underestimates the structural-historical character of the post-2000 instability; that the bicameralism reform, while institutionally , may not address the underlying presidential-Congressional pathology that has produced the eleven-Presidents-in-twenty-five-years pattern; and that the 2026 election's principal significance — for the structural-impasse reading — lies not in its winner but in the post-2031 trajectory of the post-2026 bicameral configuration.

10.4 The Synthesis

The three readings are internally consistent and mutually-irreducible. The corpus does not arbitrate among them. The closing-year empirical record — the September 2025 cabinet reshuffle, the November 2025 Constituyente rejection, the December 2025 antejuicio sequence, the second-half 2025 security-crisis spike, the 12 April 2026 first round, the April–July 2026 limbo presidencial, and the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration — admits each reading without contradiction. The reader is invited to test each reading against the empirical record and against the historiographical comparison set (Paniagua 2000–2001, Sagasti 2020–2021, and the broader post-2000 sequence) and to form an independent judgement. The corpus's institutional commitment is to document the period with sufficient empirical granularity that each reading can be defended on the evidence; the historiographical settlement will require the post-2026 evidence the corpus's later waves will document.

11. Conclusion and Forward View

The August 2025 – July 2026 closing year of the Dina Boluarte Zegarra presidency is, at the document's cut-off in early June 2026, the constitutional terminus of the post-7-December-2022 institutional period documented in the PE-D-02 through PE-D-06 sequence. The eleven-month window combined a sustained terminal-credibility crisis with a procedurally orderly electoral discharge under the restored bicameral architecture established by Ley No. 32101 of 28 November 2024. The closing year's principal events — the September 2025 cabinet reshuffle, the November 2025 Constituyente rejection, the December 2025 antejuicio sequence, the second-half 2025 security-crisis spike, the 12 April 2026 first round, the April–July 2026 limbo presidencial, and the 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration — proceeded under the prior coalition arrangement of the post-2022 sociedad de la sobrevivencia between the executive and the Congressional majority. No major institutional rupture occurred. The constitutional discharge of the post-Castillo period proceeded through the regular electoral framework. The historiographical settlement remains provisional.

The forward view from 28 July 2026 is structured by the five open questions enumerated in §1's final Key Takeaway. The Boluarte legal trajectory post-Article-117 — whether the Caso Rolex, Caso Cofopri, and Caso Cirugía Estética proceed to indictment, trial, and conviction once the constitutional immunity ceases, or settle into the structural-impunity pattern of prior post-presidential trajectories — is the principal post-transition accountability question. The post-presidential precedents of Toledo (extradited from the United States and convicted in 2023–2024), García (suicide before prosecution in 2019), Humala (post-tenure conviction in 2024), Kuczynski (post-resignation pending through 2026), Vizcarra (post-removal pending through 2026), and Castillo (criminal trial in progress through 2025–2026) provide ambiguous precedential signals; the Boluarte trajectory will further define the post-presidential-prosecution architecture of the Peruvian transition.

The post-2026 Congressional composition under the restored bicameral architecture is the principal post-transition institutional question. The 60-seat Senate and the 130-seat Chamber of Deputies, elected on 12 April 2026 and inaugurated on 28 July 2026, constitute the first bicameral configuration since the 1992 autogolpe's abolition of the bicameral tradition. The structural reading — that the bicameral framework introduces a deliberative-review layer and is intended to slow legislative production — will be tested by the post-2026 partisan composition and the new President's coalition-construction capacity.

The Castillo trial conclusion — the verdict and sentence on the Caso Rebelión before the Sala Penal Especial of the Corte Suprema — will determine the political consequences for the residual Castillo-line vote and for the protest-period accountability question. The trial sequence's overlap with the 2026 campaign produced a continuous evidentiary public record on the institutional rupture the election was tasked with resolving; the verdict will crystallise the institutional reading.

The security-crisis trajectory — whether the incoming government can move from emergency-decree to structural institutional control, and whether the Tren de Aragua and domestic-extortion configurations can be reversed — is the principal post-transition governance question. The structural drivers (transnational organised-crime expansion, domestic state-capacity weakness, the post-pandemic informal-economy reconfiguration) require a structural-institutional response that the Boluarte–Adrianzén administration did not deliver.

The constitutional-reform question — whether the post-2026 Congress takes up the Constituyente debate in a procedurally-regular Article 206 framework or whether the 1993 Constitution continues as the operative architecture — is the principal post-transition constitutional question. The November 2025 rejection foreclosed the option for the closing-year window; the post-2026 framework remains open.

The historiographical placement of the Boluarte administration — as an instance of orderly constitutional continuity (the orderly-transition reading), as terminal-legitimacy governance preserved by mutual-survival coalition (the terminal-legitimacy reading), or as one further manifestation of the deeper post-2000 instability (the structural-impasse reading) — will require the post-2026 evidence the corpus's later waves will document. The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario transition closes the period for documentary purposes; the comparative-historiographical settlement remains a research task for the corpus's projected Wave [TBD-VERIFY: post-2026 wave numbering] and beyond.

The broader Peruvian comparative-political trajectory — five Presidents in five years (Vizcarra, Merino, Sagasti, Castillo, Boluarte) is the structural fact of the post-2018 sequence; eleven Presidents in twenty-five years (Toledo, García, Humala, Kuczynski, Vizcarra, Merino, Sagasti, Castillo, Boluarte, and the constitutional successors) is the structural fact of the post-2001 democratic restoration. The post-2026 Peruvian presidency takes office in the institutional inheritance of these structural facts. Whether the 2026 election produces a President capable of governing through a full five-year term, whether the post-2026 bicameral Congress can sustain a governing coalition, and whether the post-Castillo / post-Boluarte period constitutes a terminus or a waypoint in the post-2000 instability sequence — these are the questions the post-28-July-2026 evidence will answer. The corpus will document the answers as they emerge.

The Bicentenario symbolic terminus — the post-Boluarte transition's coincidence with the 200th anniversary of San Martín's Proclamación de la Independencia del Perú of 28 July 1821 — frames the closing-year window in a historiographically resonant way. The Peruvian historiographical tradition has long held that the post-1821 first century was structured by the unresolved settlement of the Cuestión Constitucional (the founding constitutional question); that the 1933 and 1979 and 1993 Constitutions represented successive attempts at settlement; and that the bicameralism reform of 2024–2026 returns Peru to the pre-1993 institutional tradition. Whether the post-2026 Peruvian second century begins with a constitutional renewal or with a continuation of the post-2000 instability — the historiographical question that frames the closing-year window — will define the early decades of the Peruvian second century. The 28 July 2026 Bicentenario inauguration is the institutional event at which the question crystallises; the answer will emerge across the post-2026 period the corpus's later waves will document.

12. Postscript (Added 2026-08-29) — Correction: Boluarte's Actual Removal on 10 October 2025 and the Real Trajectory to the 28 July 2026 Transition

This document's title and Sections 2–10 project an eleven-month Boluarte "recta final" running from August 2025 to 28 July 2026, and narrate a September 2025 cabinet reshuffle, a November 2025 Constituyente rejection, and a December 2025 antejuicio sequence as continuing events of that government. Verified reporting establishes that this projection did not occur. Dina Boluarte was removed from office by the Congress of the Republic on 10 October 2025 — roughly ten weeks into the window this document was designed to cover, and eight and a half months before the 28 July 2026 date this document treats as her term's terminus. Everything in Sections 3–10 above describing events after early October 2025 under a continuing Boluarte–Adrianzén government should be read as this document's original, now-superseded prospective scenario rather than as the historical record; where those sections' institutional detail (the Caso Rolex charge architecture, the security-crisis statistics, the electoral calendar) predates October 2025, it stands independently of the correction below [TBD-VERIFY: this pass did not independently re-verify each pre-October-2025 claim in Sections 3–10 against a fetched primary source; corrections are limited to the presidential-succession record itself].

The trigger and the vote. On 8 October 2025 a gunman opened fire during a concert by the popular cumbia group Agua Marina in Lima, injuring five people — an attack read across Peruvian media as the culmination of a sustained wave of extortion-driven violence against musicians, transport operators, and small businesses rather than an isolated event. Contemporaneous reporting cited INEI figures of 6,041 homicides between January and mid-August 2025 (the highest for that window since 2017) and a 28 per cent year-on-year increase in extortion complaints (15,989 January–July 2025). Congress accepted four pending moción de vacancia requests and convened an impeachment debate on the night of 9 October; Boluarte was summoned to appear and defend herself before midnight but did not attend, and the unicameral Congress — 130 members, no vice presidents in the line of succession — voted just after midnight on 10 October 2025 (reported at 124 in favour, no votes against) to remove her under Article 113 of the 1993 Constitution on grounds of "permanent moral incapacity." Boluarte thereby became the fifth Peruvian President removed by this specific mechanism, after Guillermo Billinghurst (1914), Alberto Fujimori (2000), Martín Vizcarra (2020), and Pedro Castillo (2022) [TBD-VERIFY: pending primary-source fetch against the Congressional Resolución Legislativa and the Diario de Debates; search-corroborated via NPR, Al Jazeera, Britannica, OPB, and CBS News reporting dated 10 October 2025].

The succession. José Enrique Jerí Oré, then President of Congress (age 38, a lawyer), was sworn in as interim President in the early hours of 10 October 2025 to complete the remainder of Boluarte's constitutional term. Jerí's tenure lasted a little over four months. On 17–18 February 2026, Congress voted (reported 75 in favour, 24 against, 3 abstentions) to remove him as well, in a scandal Peruvian media labelled "Chifagate": an investigation into undisclosed meetings Jerí held in late December 2025 and early January 2026 with two Chinese businessmen — named in reporting as Zhihua Yang and Ji Wu Xiaodong — one of whom held active state contracts and the other of whom was under investigation for alleged illegal logging. Jerí denied wrongdoing, stating the meetings concerned organising a Peruvian-Chinese cultural festivity [TBD-VERIFY: pending primary-source fetch; search-corroborated via JURIST, WLRN, PBS NewsHour, and Al Jazeera reporting of 17–18 February 2026]. Congress then elected José María Balcázar — an 83-year-old former judge affiliated with the leftist Perú Libre party, at that point President of Congress — as the next interim President on 18 February 2026, over three rival candidates, in a vote reported as a majority of the 130-member legislature. Balcázar told journalists he would ensure the 12 April 2026 election was conducted so as to be "unquestionable," and that macroeconomic and monetary policy would remain unchanged "so that economic agents can work without concern" [TBD-VERIFY: pending primary-source fetch; search-corroborated via OPB, NPR/Houston Public Media, Connecticut Public, and the Dentons legal-alert summary]. Balcázar governed for the remaining roughly five months of the constitutional term, presiding over the fraught 12 April 2026 first round, the ensuing month-long post-electoral crisis, and the 7 June 2026 runoff (see PE-D-06 §15 and PE-D-08 §12), before transferring executive authority to President-elect Keiko Fujimori on 28 July 2026.

Implication for this document's frame. The eleven-month "Boluarte's Final Year" this document's title announces should now be read as covering, in reality, three distinct and much shorter presidencies — Boluarte (through 10 October 2025), Jerí (10 October 2025 – 17/18 February 2026), and Balcázar (18 February – 28 July 2026) — a sequence that is itself a significant addition to the "eleven presidents in twenty-five years" instability count that peru/CLAUDE.md's country frame documents (§1), and that a future PE-D document or a revision to that count should register. This document's Sections 4–6 (the September 2025 cabinet reshuffle, the November 2025 Constituyente rejection, and the December 2025 antejuicio sequence, all narrated as acts of a continuing Boluarte government) did not happen as described; [TBD-VERIFY: whether comparable cabinet, constitutional-reform, or immunity events occurred instead under the Jerí or Balcázar interim governments was not established in this research pass and should be a priority for the next recency sweep].

Boluarte's post-removal legal status. After leaving office, Boluarte remained in Peru under continuing Fiscalía scrutiny. In October 2025 a Peruvian judge rejected a request to bar her from leaving the country while prosecutors investigated alleged abuse of office and money laundering, and the Caso Rolex line of inquiry into the origin of her luxury-watch collection continued in parallel [TBD-VERIFY: pending primary-source fetch; search-corroborated via Al Jazeera ("Judge denies bid to block former President Dina Boluarte from leaving Peru," 15 October 2025) and the Rio Times ("Dina Boluarte Shielded for Now, But History Points to Prison")]. Her prosecutorial trajectory after October 2025 no longer runs through the Article 117 sitting-President immunity question this document's Sections 6 and 9 (of the original text) analyse at length, since she left office in October 2025 rather than at the 28 July 2026 date those sections assume; [TBD-VERIFY: the specific procedural status of the Caso Rolex and Caso Cofopri matters as of August 2026 was not independently confirmed this pass and remains an open item for the next sweep].