Francisco Sagasti was appointed President of Peru today by the Congress, of which he was the head, replacing Manuel Merino, who resigned after bloody street riots of youth and police on Nov. 14 left 112 injured and 2 dead. Merino was President for five days: he stepped in when the Congress on Nov. 9 toppled President Martin Vizcarra, supposedly for corruption. Vizcarra was inept, but he had made an effort to work with China on joint development projects.
Saturday’s protests were a case of unleashed pandemic psychosis. Violent youth swept the streets with no program or policy other than violence and destruction, and they were met by very nasty police repression. The backdrop is that Peru has the world’s highest per-capita COVID-19 mortality rate, and the economy has been collapsing for most of the year. The population is beyond desperate.
Sagasti is a 76-year-old engineer, who is described by AP as “a respected academic, he has also spent decades consulting for government institutions and held a post at the World Bank.” He is actually much more than that. Sagasti is a rabid Malthusian and anti-industrial economist mentored at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School by the Tavistock Institute’s Eric Trist, Fred Emory and Russell Ackoff. Tavistock is the central British psychological warfare training institution.
