President Alejandro Toledo did manage to come up with a surprise in an early cabinet reshuffle which, in defiance of pressure from all quarters, kept all the 'heavyweights' of his earlier cabinet in their posts. The surprise was the appointment of Peru's first woman prime minister, Beatriz Merino.
She was not his first choice, though he had let it be known that he would be picking someone from outside the ruling Perú Posible (PP). Among those who had been approached earlier were Luis Bedoya Reyes (former mayor of Lima and president of the Partido Popular Cristiano, PPC), Lourdes Flores, former presidential candidate and current leader of Unidad Nacional (UN) -and, according to some sources, the novelist and former presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa.
The PP bloc in congress had unsuccessfully advocated the appointment of the outgoing president of the legislature, Juan Carlos Ferrero. The local media suggested that Toledo had even tried his luck with retired General Francisco Morales Bermúdez, a former military President.
When the candidates were not blackballed by Toledo's party (Bedoya's case), they were simply unwilling to take on the job.
The task of finding a new PM was proving so difficult that Toledo decided to stay away from the Andean Community Summit in order to finalise it. In the end, it appears that it was Vargas Llosa who suggested the name of Merino.
The new PM. Beatriz Merino is a tax expert who obtained her master's degree at Harvard and went on to postgraduate studies at the LSE. Well known in hemispheric forums, she has led the IDB's programme for women leaders and has been associated with the Inter-American Dialogue and the Comisión Andina de Juristas.
In 1990 she was elected to the senate under the Banner of Fredemo, the coalition backing Vargas Llosa's failed bid for the presidency. In 1995 she won a seat in the lower chamber of congress. Under Toledo, Merino has been serving as head of the Superintendencia Nacional de Administración Tributaria (Sunat), the tax collection agency.
The rest. Apart from Merino's appointment, the reshuffle was a bit of a damp squib. Five new ministers were appointed, mainly to 'social' portfolios: Carlos Malpica (education), Alvaro Vidal (health), Ana Elena Townsend (women's affairs and social development) and Jesús Alvarado. The fifth, Francisco Gonzales, went to agriculture.
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