Justice in Peru Is a Danger for Its Politics

Peru is facing yet another challenge to its young democratic institutions. The U.S. extradition of former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo is a win for Peru’s judicial system. But it again shows the depth of malaise among the country’s political parties and politicians. Whether the country can withstand the ongoing instability will determine whether it will succumb to the same problems of neighbors like Chile and Brazil, or if it will continue as a stable and prosperous democracy.

The extradition of Toledo, who served in office from 2001 to 2006, was a long time coming. The country’s top court sentenced him to 18 months of preventive detention in 2017 for an investigation into taking millions in bribes from Odebrecht for a highway project. But Toledo had already left the country for California, where he had been living for years since his presidential term ended. He was in and out of jail in the United States over the last several years before his extradition.

Toledo now follows a sordid bunch of Peruvian ex-presidents. Many have been caught, like Toledo, in the same massive Odebrecht scandal. The Brazilian construction company admitted to bribing Latin American officials for decades in exchange for contracts. One former president is currently standing trial for Odebrecht bribery, another is under house arrest, and a third fatally shot himself as the police arrived at his home to arrest him in 2019.

These presidents have stretched across the ideological spectrum and Peru’s sprawling and fractured party system. In fact, most presidents have loose party affiliations to begin with. Most of Peru’s political parties serve as vehicles for political personalities and rise and fall with those same personalities.

The extradition comes at a sensitive time for Peru. The country is still reeling from the attempted coup by former president Pedro Castillo in December 2022. Castillo’s stunning attempt to concentrate power lasted only a few hours before he tried to flee and ended up behind bars. But Castillo’s demise sparked a deadly wave of protests, mainly among rural Peruvians who viewed Castillo as a beleaguered champion of the poor against Lima’s wealthy elite. Their brutal treatment at the hands of police entrenched this narrative. Castillo’s successor and former vice president, Dina Boluarte, is hanging onto office by a thread and has little support in Congress.

There will not be much love lost on Toledo. While he played an important role in the early 2000s in helping the country transition to democracy after the authoritarian rule of Alberto Fujimori, his government suffered repeated scandals, and his approval ratings dipped into the single digits. He spent several years after his presidency at Stanford University—in fact, I recall having an uninspiring conversation with him there while I was a doctoral student about the troubling ability of developing democracies to sustain high levels of inequality. He has mostly lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since then.

Peru has struggled to build a political party system since Toledo’s time in office. Parties never manage to build robust constituencies on the basis of clearly discernible and reasonably stable ideologies. And the shift away from reelection has fostered short-term thinking, opportunism, and corruption among politicians. The trend has only worsened over time. The country has had three different Congresses and six presidents in the past five years.

This is a sharp contrast to the country’s judicial system, which continues to notch wins against corrupt current and former officials. Observers were quick to note, for instance, how roundly Castillo’s coup attempt was defeated and how rapidly he was served justice.

In a similar fashion, the country’s economic institutions have so far largely remained above the political fray. Until the country was walloped by the pandemic, it was one of the fastest growing economies in the region and attracted considerable foreign investment. It has since recovered, albeit at a slower pace than the prior decade.

But Peru’s nonpolitical institutions cannot survive on their own forever without political support, or at least a modicum of stability. Amid such political volatility, it is only a matter of time before a politician comes to the fore who manages to weaken the judiciary. Although Peru’s presidency is relatively weaker compared to its Congress than some of its neighbors, political instability and party collapse paved the way for strongmen in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.

As for the insulation of Peru’s economy, numerous presidents in recent years have threatened to tear up the country’s economic model only to tack to the center under pressure or bribery. Investors could hardly be blamed about wondering whether the country will continue to be favorable for business. Chile is a cautionary tale: the instability of the last three years is driving investors to the exits.

Stability, however, is nowhere on the horizon. The demands of protesters against Castillo’s ouster remain unmet. There is little social consensus about the country’s economic model, and the rural-urban divide is stark. Congress remains dysfunctional, and there are still no political parties that can credibly promise to be both responsive and accountable.

The downfall of former President Toledo against this backdrop will only fuel popular narratives that politicians across the board are corrupt and incompetent, and that the system as a whole has to be torn down. That is a dangerous situation for any democracy.

Neighboring Chile and Brazil serve as cautionary tales. Chile boiled over against the persistent and unfair legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship but has failed to agree on an alternative and is stuck in political purgatory. Brazil turned to a political outsider in Jair Bolsonaro, who promised to shake up the system and clean up politics but ended up polarizing the country and driving it into disastrous pandemic and environmental policies that his successor will have to spend precious time and capital to mend. The coming few years will determine whether Peru can not only turn away from its current inadequate political system, but also replace it with a more functional one that its citizens can be proud of.