The new president of Peru defends that sex at an early age helps women psychologically

Congress elected him yesterday as successor to the dismissed José Jerífallen from grace just four months after replacing the former president in office In Boluarte for his dark connections with two Chinese businessmen involved in illicit activities and his murky relationship with women.

Balcázar was not the favorite. His name wasn’t even in the pools. But the surprise came in the second parliamentary vote on Wednesday, when she surpassed the conservative congresswoman in votes. Maricarmen Alvawho was already considering the presidency. Later he was named president of Congress and, automatically, head of state.

Congressman Balcázar was tasked with guaranteeing governability in an ungovernable country that burns presidents at cruising speed. He is the eighth head of state in the last ten years. The presidential sash shows wear and tear. Their predecessors are dead, behind bars or embroiled in serious accusations of corruption.

Balcázar does not promise to be the exception, however. Furthermore, he only has five months to try to change the perception of Peruvian society, because he is on loan. He will leave office next July, after learning the identity of his successor in the second round of uncertain elections in which more than thirty candidates appear.

If his predecessor Jerí was involved in sexual scandals, Balcázar does not distance himself from that line. In 2023, the new president of Peru defended marriage between adult men and women under 14 years of age. He also stated that having sexual relations at an early age has psychological benefits for women.

“In large cities, de facto unions are early, sexual relations are early and legal medicine knows perfectly well that, as long as there is no violence, early sexual relations rather help the psychological future of women,” he argued in a parliamentary session in which the prohibition of marriage with minors was then debated, and in which Balcázar abstained.

His statements caused such a scandal that the Ministry of Women’s Affairs was forced to issue a statement in which they accused him of trying to “justify sexual relations with minors by indicating that they promote their development.” “The existing evidence contradicts his position,” the note concluded.

Far from retracting, Balcázar doubled down by ensuring that sexual relations in youth “do not generate traumatic consequences because they are voluntary relations between boys.”

This Thursday, in his first interview as acting president, Balcázar assured that he had not changed his position on this matter: “I am a man permanently firm in my convictions and what I speak, I speak with propriety and I consider myself a man who, in this specific case that you tell me, I have always thought well, I have exercised it as a judge and I know and have the culture to speak about it,” he declared into the microphones of the RPP radio station.

Wearing the presidential sash has not softened his opinion on child marriage either, as he recalled in the aforementioned interview.

Balcázar’s comments are not the only source of controversy. The newly inaugurated president was investigated for committing alleged irregularities in the management of institutional funds when he was dean of the Lambayeque Bar Association, between 2019 and 2020. The Prosecutor’s Office even filed an accusation for illicit appropriation, and the Bar Association expelled him in December 2024.

Balcázar is also under investigation for false statements in an administrative process and a constitutional complaint for exchanging favors with the former attorney general. Patricia Benavidesinvestigated for leading a corruption network from the public ministry to reach and remain in office in exchange for filing open investigations against numerous parliamentarians.

The then congressman supposedly agreed to support Benavides in the Prosecutor’s Office in exchange for judicial favors in proceedings opened against him, at the same time that it was questioned that his daughter-in-law was appointed as prosecutor after apparently a meeting with advisors of the then Attorney General Benavides, according to reports Efe.

Balcázar was Castillo’s man, but he clarified that he would not pardon the former president, imprisoned in the famous Barbadillo prison, where three other former heads of state remain imprisoned: Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala y Martin Vizcarra.

“In principle, no one has asked me. Secondly, it is not on the agenda because one always has to work on concrete material and objective facts,” he declared in the same interview with RPP. “It would be impertinent and inappropriate. I am a man who respects the powers of the State and the independence of powers… to be trying to interfere in the jurisdictional affairs of the Judiciary,” he added.