What encouraged you to take the plunge, being an outsider from the academic world? He had his own small personal epic when, as rector, he opened the doors of the National University of Engineering (UNI) to student delegations from the southern Andean region who came to protest against Dina Boluarte and ‘to take Lima’ in the summer of 2023.
In the middle of the second round, Alfonso López-Chau ( Ahora Nación ) tried to join forces with the then presidential candidate Roberto Sánchez. Photo: Roberto Sánchez
While the UNI welcomed them, San Marcos opened its doors for the police to raid them. After that contrast, one of the last university-based parties was forged. By the way, the details and risks of that will be known when whoever won the election for the rectorship of UNI held yesterday, begins his administration and delves into the accounting and agreements of his predecessors.
The short intro is worth saying that Alfonso is an indecisive leader and he showed it once again this week when he said, after the outbreak of a fight between Minister César Astudillo and the radical senator Íber Maravíwho was tempted to “ask for his questioning’, after having ruled out his censure (that is what he meant, since the minister was already questioned weeks ago, on September 17).
Senator Alfonso López Chau leads the Now Nation bench. Photo: Bancada Ahora Nación.
Alfonso has excited many anti-system professionals; but he is not. He likes to talk about progress with investment, about his time as director of the BCR and about unity within the left and from the left outside, about the communion of all centers, about uniting everyone and then debating about what.
But his bench, with characters like Indira Huilca, Ruth Luque and Mirtha Vásquez, pull him towards pure and simple leftist progressivism. At the same time, interdisciplinary characters such as Harvey Colchado and Jaime Delgado distance him from ideology. Harvey, for example, fought for his party, with the approval of Alfonso, to spare Astudillo’s life; while the three women with parliamentary experience gave the general the finger. And now what happened, Alfonso?
Indecision usually results from wanting to please many, their dissenters and the other parties. He does not seek the center like Jorge Nieto of the Good Government Party (PBG), who calculates when to give in to the ruling party and when to radicalize; In him the idea of center seems to be indefinite. Right-wing leaders tend to praise him as a man who is very open to dialogue and willing to make agreements, but they know that his party has ideas that are more difficult to negotiate. Even Jair Manrique, the ‘young man of technology’, after talking about science, becomes passionate and agrees with the hard line.
Therefore, López Chau cannot offer himself, like other party and bench leaders, to be faithful to any scale. If you try, it will only be yours where you can resolve some minor issues and pass the vote with freedom of conscience where a disciplined vote would strengthen the negotiating capacity of the bench. Character, according to his former collaborator Carlos León Moya, is expressed with more decibels towards his subordinates.
Alfonso avoids interviews, perhaps so that he is not pressured to respond with definitions that he does not want or cannot give. He’s most comfortable in brief encounters with the swarm of microphones in the Lost Steps gallery, with shorter answers to questions he can dribble away.
At 76 years old he no longer has patience for long interrogations like the ones he had to undergo when he was reproached for an old ‘indulgent’ column (that’s what he called it although it was more than that) with the emerretista leader Víctor Polay or when he was reminded of a prison episode from his youth and he attributed it to a persecution by the Velasquista dictatorship. The truth of the incident remained nebulous, as do some of his political positions.
López Chau is the only case of a presidential candidate who ended up as a congressman. Rafael López Aliaga disdained his election to the Senate, Roberto Sánchez did not have enough votes to be a representative for Lima, and the others who won a seat did not apply on the list. That singularity should be enough reason to keep him in the spotlight, weighing his actions and forceful political statements, rather than highlighting him for his doubts.
