Josué Gutiérrez is not a political analyst. He is not invited to journalistic programs to act as a guru of national events or to project hypothetical scenarios. He is the Ombudsman. And he should act as such. His statements carry institutional weight. He has every right to share his opinions with his friends, but when he speaks in a media outlet, he must remember that he represents an entity that safeguards the constitutional rights of individuals. He is no longer speaking as a former nationalist congressman or as the lawyer of those prosecuted for corruption.
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“If tomorrow Mrs. Keiko Fujimori closes Congress, her popularity will rise by twenty or thirty points,” he said this week in an interview with Exitosa. Although he later tried to patch things up as much as possible and claimed to be “a democrat,” the truth is that he proposed a possible constitutional rupture from the perspective of the political benefit this would represent.
Unintentionally, Gutiérrez has achieved something rare in the Peruvian political class: consensus. His statements have been so misguided that political colors were set aside and unanimity prevailed in Congress. Leftists and rightists, Fujimorists and Castillists, all the legislators who have spoken out have agreed in emphatically rejecting the statements of the Ombudsman who, in his spare time, acts as a political commentator.
In a country with recent precedents of constitutional ruptures and political instability, proposing hypothetical scenarios and calculating how many approval points they would add reveals tremendous irresponsibility and a worrying carelessness.
The Ombudsman’s Office is about to turn 30 years old. It is an institution that deserves to be headed by someone who takes on the challenge of being a counterweight to abuses of power and not by a frivolous commentator who, in every public intervention, diminishes the high office he holds.
