Peru's government under President Keiko Fujimori has placed at least three former opposition lawmakers in state positions in recent days, including Esdras Medina at the education quality agency Sineace and Diana González as head of the national scholarship program Pronabec.
Medina, a former congressman for the Renovación Popular party, was named an advisor at the Sistema Nacional de Evaluación, Acreditación y Certificación de la Calidad Educativa (Sineace), the body that evaluates and accredits Peruvian schools and universities and certifies professional skills gained through work experience or training.
Renovación Popular's education record
During the last Congress, Renovación Popular's caucus pushed to eliminate Comprehensive Sexual Education from schools and backed rules that weakened oversight of universities by the regulator Sunedu. Medina himself promoted a proposal, reintroduced after an earlier reconsideration, to allow rectors of public universities to be reelected, despite opposition from several universities that warned it would undermine their autonomy.
González takes over Pronabec
On September 2, former Alianza para el Progreso congresswoman Diana González was appointed executive director of Pronabec, a decision signed by Education Minister José Antonio Chang. The agency is currently facing a funding and coverage crisis that directly affects thousands of low-income young people who depend on it to pursue a professional career.
According to Pronabec's job classification manual, the executive director post requires a university degree, eight years of general work experience, four years of specific experience in the role, and two years in management positions or their equivalent.
González's declared work history shows she was a distance-learning assistant at the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas between March 2020 and July 2021, and worked in the after-sales department and management of the car dealer Faga Motors S.A. She also listed her time as president of the Peruvian Volleyball Federation between January 2017 and January 2018. None of these roles involves the specialized educational management experience the Pronabec position calls for.
A resignation from the teachers' pension fund
The appointment that caused the most trouble for Minister Chang was that of Tania Ramírez to the board of the Derrama Magisterial, the institution that manages the pension contributions and funds of state teachers. After it emerged that Ramírez had travelled on trips coinciding with the minister's, the former congresswoman resigned roughly three weeks after taking the post. President Fujimori sought to play down the matter.
Cavero returns to Congress as an advisor
Former congressman Alejandro Cavero, who failed to win reelection and left the Avanza País party after it fell short of the vote threshold, has returned to the Congress building. An independent outlet recorded him entering the Legislative Palace on September 2 to work as an advisor in the office of Miguel Torres, the senator who presides over the upper chamber and also serves as Peru's second vice president. The advisory post pays approximately 18,985 soles a month, based on the amounts assigned to advisors in the vice presidency.
The move contrasts with Cavero's own past criticism of people he accused of living off the state. As a congressman, he said some of his opponents were two-faced, claiming they needed the state to support them like many others who depended on public funds because they feared they could not succeed in a capitalist system. In 2023, he said former minister Alejandro Salas should look for a job like any former public official instead of living off state-funded fuel. Cavero, now without a seat of his own, has taken an advisory job funded by the state he once criticized others for depending on.
'We are seeing the tree, not the forest'
Christian Castillo, a lawyer specializing in state contracting and labor law, said the pattern goes beyond isolated cases and reflects systematic political recycling that began before Fujimori took office, continuing through the administrations of Dina Boluarte and José Jerí, whose officials, congressmen, ministers and vice-ministers are now being recycled into the new government.
Castillo said it was disappointing that 16 years of elections and four constitutional terms had not allowed Fujimori's movement to build a pool of qualified professionals, which he said showed neither the president nor her government was prepared to face the institutional crisis Peru has lived through for 30 years. He argued that having been a congressman does not qualify someone to lead a team, and that justifying it through experience coordinating advisors was a stretch. He added that the Derrama Magisterial carries heavy financial responsibility as the entity managing pensions and contributions for active, retired and former teachers, and that such appointments show the government lacks the capacity to surround itself with technocrats of sound moral standing to run an institution.
'The state has become a prize for political favors'
Fernando Cárdenas, a political scientist and professor at the Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, told La República that the appointments show the state apparatus lacks filters and technical capacity. He said the state has essentially become a prize to repay political favors, describing a dynamic of mutual support in which public services and goods keep deteriorating for citizens.
Cárdenas said Peru has historically lacked a professional civil service in which posts are filled through public competition matched to a technical profile, adding that the civil service law has been effectively abandoned in favor of political appointments to positions of trust. He noted a contradiction between the rhetoric Fujimori's movement used in opposition and its conduct now in government, and said Cavero's case was aggravated because he spent his entire term attacking people he accused of depending on state handouts, a contradiction he called flagrant given his current job.
Cárdenas said the main victims of this distribution of posts are students in the Beca 18 and Generación Bicentenario scholarship programs, some of whom have been admitted to leading universities worldwide but lack the institutional support to make sense of that achievement as Pronabec deteriorates rapidly. He said Latinobarómetro data shows citizens increasingly view the state as a prize rather than an entity meant to serve them.
