Peru’s government under Keiko Fujimori denied its own documents on the first day of taking office, raising questions about competence or intent, an editorial argues.
Labor Minister Juan Sheput said in an interview that a document circulating on inauguration day, covering public holidays and delegated powers, was only a very lightly commented draft, and that holidays would not be cut before an impact assessment. The document had already been reported across the media.
The editorial contends that a government contradicting its own materials on day one is either improvising or executing a plan to exhaust a transitional cabinet before replacing it with a more authoritarian one.
The draft also includes a proposal to review the credit market, which in practice means evaluating whether to remove an interest rate cap that has protected consumers since 2021. The government argues the cap harms microcredit and financial inclusion for small businesses. A 2025 ESAN study using data from five Municipal Banks found the opposite: the cap did not reduce lending to micro and small enterprises. Effective credit card rates already reach 208 percent despite the existing cap.
A third issue left unaddressed in the inaugural address is infrastructure. Fujimori promised a central highway and metro lines 2 through 6, projects requiring billions of dollars, with no financing plan beyond a reference to fiscal sustainability.
The editorial urges opposition legislators in the Consenso por la Democracia to scrutinize all three fronts from the opening congressional debate.
