Peru ve Kolombiya'da Yeni Sağ Liderlerin Vaatlerini Gerçekleştirme Zorluğu

New leaders in Peru and Colombia may find it hard to deliver on their promises

New leaders in Peru and Colombia may find it hard to deliver on their promises Expert comment jon.wallace 13 July 2026 The new presidents are part of a swing to the right in Latin American politics – but can they govern such divided societies? In the space of two weeks in June, two Andean countries elected new right-wing governments. In Peru, Keiko Fujimori, leader of its largest congressional party, won the presidency on her fourth attempt. In Colombia, Abelardo de la Espriella, a criminal defence lawyer running for office for the first time, defeated Iván Cepeda, a senator of the governing left. Fujimori will take office later this month, de la Espriella in August. It is tempting to interpret these outcomes as part of a regional swing to the right, aligned with US President Donald Trump – and it is often reported as such. However, the deeper story is one of persistently divided societies: in Peru and Colombia electorates were split almost exactly in half. Fujimori’s margin of victory was so narrow that the count stretched on for days. De la Espriella won by 49.7 per cent to 48.7. Indeed, the UNDP’s 2026 regional report finds that political polarization in Latin America has grown faster than in any other region and now exceeds the global average. This raises an important question. When mandates are this thin and political antagonism this deep, can election winners govern? The paradox of prosperous fragility Both Peru and Colombia enter this period with mixed economic realities. And in both countries, politics has come at the cost of better economic outcomes. Neither government will have a political honeymoon. Peru retains credible macroeconomic anchors. It has an independent central bank, one of the region’s lowest public debt ratios, inflation converging to target, and a pipeline of new mining projects worth some $60 billion. The country grew 5.5 per cent a year during the commodity boom between 2004 and 2013. But politics has been highly unstable for a prolonged period and potential growth is now closer to 2.5 per cent, dragged down by a public administration weakened by constant turnover. Fujimori also inherits an insolvent state oil company, and multibillion-dollar arbitration claims against the state. In addition, forecasters confirm an El Niño weather system is underway this year, with a 63 per cent probability of reaching ‘very strong’ magnitude. Past El Niño systems have cost between 0.7 and 5.3 per cent of Peru’s GDP. Polarization manufactures the demand for strong hands while destroying the supply of what the evidence says works: broad coalitions, patient reform, credible institutions. Colombia, a larger and more diversified economy, has sluggish economic growth, fiscal deficits and public indebtedness near historical highs. Security is deteriorating: a leading presidential candidate was assassinated during the campaign, and the implementation of a decade-old peace agreement has stalled. Illegal armed groups have grown to around 27,000 members. Extortion and organized crime are expanding. Crime has displaced the economy as citizens’ first concern. Meanwhile the IMF has advised Colombia to carry out a fiscal consolidation of roughly three points of GDP. But that task will require precisely the broad congressional coalitions that polarization makes hard to build. Congress is the real second round Both presidents will quickly discover that runoff elections are easier to win than decisive votes in their legislatures. Neither commands a majority and building coalitions will remain key to successful governance in both countries. In Colombia, de la Espriella faces a Congress where traditional parties hold the balance, and a defeated left retains real capacity for mobilization, having drawn 12 million votes in the election. Peru’s new bicameral Congress seats six parties in the lower house. And it sets supermajority requirements in the Senate that act, for the first time in decades, as a brake on the impeachment habit that removed or forced out every president since 2016. Despite these reforms, Fujimori can expect difficulties. Her party bears much of the responsibility for the fiscal populism seen in Congress in recent years – and practiced zero-sum politics from the legislature. She can now expect her opponents to return the favour. Deadlock in these legislatures would inflict further damage on trust in institutions and faith in democracy. Latinobarómetro’s 2024 report found regional support for democracy growing to 52 per cent. But in Peru (and Bolivia) it fell, in Peru’s case to just 44 per cent. Just 10 per cent were satisfied with how their democracy works. In Colombia satisfaction with democracy barely reaches 20 per cent. Meanwhile what Latinobarómetro calls ‘expectations pressure’ – the gap between personal and national economic expectations – stands at 15 percentage points, the widest since 1995. That suggests electorates will not tolerate underperformance by the new governments. Governing against polarization Polarization is persistent in Peru and Colombia, but it is not an insurmountable challenge. Four courses of action could make a difference. The first would be to form governments that include talent beyond the winning coalitions, creating pluralistic, competent cabinets. In Peru’s case, Fujimori should draw on the economic technocracy that has served administrations of every stripe. In Colombia, de la Espriella could reach out to the political centre to negotiate a short legislative agenda during his first weeks in office. Related work State capacity, mining and community relations in Peru A second imperative is to leave independent institutional bodies alone. Central banks, electoral authorities and comptrollers held both countries together through the turmoil of the past decade. A public commitment to respect their autonomy, and to renounce prosecutions and impeachments as political weapons, is the best confidence-building measure available. Third, dialogue must be institutionalized where conflict is produced. Chatham House’s own research on Peru’s mining sector recommends standing, multi-sector dialogues between government, communities and companies. The same logic applies in Colombia’s post-conflict municipalities, where violence feeds on the state’s absence. Finally, the new governments must deliver in the areas that did not vote for them. Polarization in both countries is territorial – Peru’s southern highlands, and Colombia’s rural periphery, for instance, are strongholds of the left. Bringing roads, land titles, police and functioning courts to those jurisdictions will do more to close the divide than appeals to unity. The ultimate question Behind all this analysis lies the question polarized societies face: can populist, strong-hand rule deliver? The long-run evidence gives little hope. The most comprehensive study available – 120 years of populist governments worldwide – finds income per capita roughly ten per cent lower after fifteen years of populist rule, through eroded institutions and collapsed investment. Peru’s history proves this point clearly: Alberto Fujimori delivered stabilization and defeated terrorism. But the demolition of the party system that took place during his presidency fuelled institutional deterioration. In El Salvador homicides have collapsed, and its citizens report the region’s second-highest satisfaction with democracy. But that experience is hardly replicable in the Andes, where transnational criminal economies, built on illegal gold and cocaine, command export markets that would likely survive even mass arrests. Polarization manufactures the demand for strong hands while destroying the supply of what the evidence says works: broad coalitions, patient reform, credible institutions. These are the real challenges facing both incoming administrations. Whether their democracies can deliver fast enough to address voters’ dissatisfaction with their systems will be answered in Lima and Bogotá in the months ahead.