Public outcry has forced a reversal of the appointments to key offices of state – the Constitutional Tribunal, the human rights Defensoría and the Central Bank – underlining dissatisfaction with the workings of party politics. The announcement on 25 July of three new appointments to cabinet positions – all women – is unlikely to quell public frustration with the perceived shortcomings of the Humala administration in Peru.

In the run-up to the traditional Independence Day festivities on July 28, which President Humala will use to try to prop up his sagging popularity ratings, three new cabinet appointments were announced. Monica Rubio replaces Carolina Trivelli at the ministry of development and social inclusion, a key post in Humala’s attempts to spread the benefits of economic growth more widely. Magali Silva takes over from José Luis Silva Martinot as minister for foreign trade and tourism, while Diana Alvarez Calderón is the new minister of culture.

The appointments – mainly trusted technocrats – are not likely to lead to any change in underlying policies. Luis Miguel Castilla, still in charge at the all-important Ministry of Economy and Finance and Julio Velarde at the Central Bank, will continue an approach considered pro-business by social movements. Rubio’s social inclusion ministry will have a key role in seeking to make ‘trickle down’ trickle further, but may find that her departmental budget will come under pressure as the rate of economic growth falls.

Dissatisfaction with the government’s record is in the ascendant, with Humala’s popularity ratings down sharply in the last few months. Surveys show widespread perceptions that the government is failing to meet key voter concerns, especially in the area of citizen (in)security. There had been widespread speculation that the cabinet change would have replaced Wilfredo Pedraza as interior minister, the man responsible for law and order.

Meanwhile public perceptions of the workings of the state were further clouded this month by bungled appointments to key offices of state: the Constitutional Tribunal, the Central Bank and the Defensoría del Pueblo. Following a ‘repartija’ (carve up) of these offices by an alliance of three leading parties (the ruling Gana Peru, Peru Posible and Fujimori’s Fuerza Popular), widespread protests forced the congressional authorities to backtrack, declaring the process null and void. This is but the latest of many attempts to fill vacancies in the three institutions. New elections will now have to take place.

Several of those elected were widely criticised as unsuitable; none more so than Rolando Sousa, a former lawyer for jailed ex-president Alberto Fujimori. Sousa was widely considered to have been elected with a view to declaring Fujimori’s continued imprisonment illegal. Leading politicians, particularly those from parties and groupings that had not benefited from the ‘repartija’ led the campaign to get the elections reversed. They were helped on by the anti-Humala media, as well as by large demonstrations on the streets of Lima.

Humala therefore enters his third year as president with his popularity falling and with opposition in the ascendant. Aldo Panfichi, a leading social scientist, has pointed to the potentially destabilising situation brewing in the country, with social discontent rising and a vacillating government apparently lacking a clear idea of where it is heading. There is the potential for Brazil-style protests to break out in Peruvian cities, with people angered by the impotence and corruption of the political class. Although demonstrations have been small compared to those in Brazil, they are thought to be among the biggest that Lima has witnessed for a century.