Peru's new leftist president added Hernando de Soto, a renowned pro-market economist, to his government

José María Balcázar Zelada, acting president of Peru, added Hernando de Soto, a renowned pro-market economist and defender of private property, to the government. Thus, he will assume the presidency of the Council of Ministers, the most important position after Balcazar himself.

Balcázar, 83, took office on an interim basis on February 18, thus becoming the eighth Peruvian president in ten years. He will remain in the Government Palace until the swearing-in of the new president, scheduled for next July. The next elections in the South American country will be held on April 12.

"We have to resort (to Hernando de Soto) to guarantee this economic model and that the new president of the republic that should arrive in July has the master lines and no economic shocks," Zelada told the local media Exitosa Noticias.

"(With) those economic guidelines, he is not going to have any kind of inconvenience with the ministers. The man (De Soto) knows how to reach consensus, he is a very experienced man, and so am I. So we cannot have, so to say, someone who is dissenting from the premier's lines," he added.

De Soto, whose main objective will be to stabilize the country until the arrival of a new president, has a very different political vision from Balcázar's, which is associated with Marxism and Leninism. Instead, de Soto founded the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD), a think tank focused on free-market ideas and the defense of property rights in developing countries.

The new official was a presidential candidate in 2021, finishing fourth with 11.63% of the vote. He finished less than two percentage points behind second place, which would have given him access to a runoff against the eventual president now imprisoned, Pedro Castillo.