Last night’s cabinet reshuffle in Peru saw the now ex-FinMin Mercedes Araoz replaced by traditional Peru upper class family member (and banker) Ismael Benavides (a decent potted history of the dude here at Reuters this morning).
Speaking of Reuters, do you remember back to August 17th when Reuters Peru broke the story about Mercedes Araoz getting the boot? We at IKN do and recognize that the newswire got a decent scoop, even though its timing was off by something less than a month (they said it was going to happen that week). The very next day, President Twobreakfasts himself stepped up to deny it all, saying, “She’s my star minister, how can I possibly get rid of her?“. Four weeks later, this supposed “star minister exits stage left saying how this move was “a good option” for her because she could “concentrate on her professional life”. What bollocks! I think we can safely say that Reuters is a very well connected newswire down Lima way. We can also say that Garcia is a two-faced crudball, but that’s not going to come as much surprise.
Meanwhile, the change at the FinMin won’t mean any sort of change in the running of Peru’s economy, as all the people who have sat as FinMin recently have done the right thing: don’t touch the controls and let the country run on the autopilot put that was set seven years ago by PPK……and then pretend the current government is the one that’s done all the hard work.