One of the most precarious political jobs on the planet has claimed another victim. Javier Velasquez has resigned as prime minister of Peru. He is the 19th prime minister since the passage of the most recent constitution in 1993. This means the average tenure of a Peruvian PM is about 11 months. Given PM Velasquez was appointed in July 2009, he has had a relatively good innings.

This time there was a somewhat mundane reason for the PM’s departure. According to Art. 91 of the constitution, ministers and deputy ministers “who have not resigned from office six months before the election may not be elected to Congress”. PM Velasquez and a number of his ministerial colleagues intend to stand in next April’s election. Therefore, they had to resign.

The new PM is Antonio Chang, the former Education Minister. Like his predecessor, he is from President Garcia’s APRA party. The names of the government ministers are available here.