Breaking: Salomon Lerner said to have resigned as Peru's Prime Minister (multiple updated)

According to Peru Vice-Veep of Congress Yehude Simon, Peru's Cabinet Chief Prime Minister and basically the second most powerful political figure after Ollanta Humala, Salomon Lerner, has resigned his post. Here's a tweet from Peru's decent newspaper La Republica on the breaking news.

If confirmed, this moves the political playing field in a big way in Peru.

Update: On Yehude Simon's twitter account, he's talking about his reliable source close to the event and how the move was "inevitable".

UPDATE 2: We hear in very provisional and underground info that "several other" ministers on the left leaning wing of the Humala government are also out in a purge that looks like taking the Humala government towards a harder line with protesters. If true we're likely to see much less dialogue from now on and more crackdowns.

UPDATE 3: We now hear a full re-shuffle of cabinet ministers will happen tomorrow with at least three ministers leaving and perhaps as many as five. Along with Lerner, the exit door is shown to Culture Minister Susana Baca, Agro Minister Miguel Caillaux and Women's Minister Aida Garci.

You hear it here first, people.

UPDATE 4: Lerner's resignation now confirmed via official government communique. At least we know why Ollanta Humala backed out of his trip to watch the Cristina show at the last minute on Thursday evening.

UPDATE 5: If this latest rumour is correct, we have a full scale crisis on our hands in Peru. We're hearing...unconfirmed (there are now a zillion rumours now flying, but this one is fairly well sourced) that the entire Humala cabinet of ministers has resigned along with Lerner.

UPDATE 6: Ok, update 5 is true but it's also normal protocol to see all ministers offer resignations when the cabinet chief resigns, so it's not so bad. What we now wait for is Humala's call or "should s/he stay or should s/he go?" on each minister. Latest whisper is that Mining and Energy Minister Carlos Herrera Descalzi won't be coming back, but we're now starting to get rumours upon rumours so it may be time to sit back and let official word come through on all changes. Not only that, but the Real Madrid/Barsa match starts at 4pm local time (80 minutes from now) so there are more important things going on, too :-)

UPDATE 7: Salomon Lerner's resignation letter here. Meanwhile there is some talk doing the rounds that Humala refused to accept his resignation and they're trying to reach some kind of agreement in which Lerner stays on. All rather strange stuff and hardly reflects well on Humala's leadership qualities if true. The guy wants to resign, well let him resign!


UPDATE 8: Ok, we now hear that Interior Minister Óscar Valdés Dancuart will be the next Cabinet Chief and PM and that Humala has indeed accepted Lerner's resignation. The swearing-in ceremony happens tomorrow. Meanwhile Real Madrid went one goal up about five minutes ago and Messi nearly equalized just a couple of minutes later, so El Clasico looks like a cracker.


UPDATE 9: Latest rumour is that all other cabinet ministers will keep their posts...for the time being at least. Only Lerner leaving. If true, good for Humala. However I'll stress here that there are still zillions of rumours flying about and some sources are better than others. This is one that needs to be confirmed in your author's humble opinion.


UPDATE 10: It's half-time at the Bernabeu and 1-1, so time to think about this resignation and  paragraph four of Lerner's bye bye letter is the key here (starts "En este marco..."). What it says between the lines is that Lerner's strategy of looking for dialogue and consensus between opposing factions hasn't worked and that if Humala wants to use other tactics, it's best for him to gracefully retire first. This is almost certainly referring to what Humala has decided to do about the Minas Conga protest in Cajamarca and speaking in general terms, I really really don't think thiS news is going to go down well with those intent on opposing the government on the mine plan...not in the confrontational way they've been doing so far, at least. One should not forget that Humala is an ex-army guy and that he had a reputation of being pretty ruthless during his time commanding battalions against Sendero insurgents in the 1990s. That's my take on things, anyway.


UPDATE 11: This is the last one for today, I have a Weekly to write for one thing. The Peru press is now taking the line of "ex-military man (Valdes) joins ex-military man (Humala) at the helm" and playing up the apparent loss of dialogue-style politicians in favour of more authoritarian figures. That may be the case, but then again it might be oversimplifying things because Lerner jumped suddenly (Lerner probably made his intentions clear to Humala Thurs PM Friday AM, who in turn made the snap decision not to attend Cristina's inauguration in Argentina) and was not pushed. However it is telling that the first major change in the executive cabinet is an apparent shift to the right and not the left (frankly I was expecting the FinMin to be the key change some time next year and his replacement a vital pivot point, but this one does the same job). The message is now pretty clear; Humala has turned his back on classic left wing populist policies and is coming from right-of-centre.


UPDATE 12: OK, one last one at 8:30pm EST.. Talk now is of a swearing-in ceremony tonight (update: now confirmed for 8pm Sunday evening) with Valdés getting his job and also a couple of ministerial changes. Environmental lawyer Manuel Pulgar-Vidalis to take the Environment Ministry job, with current Min Ricardo Giesecke out on his ear (he was a bit of a disaster in the job, has to be said). Also Valdés' move to Prime Minister means his job until today of Interior Ministry is given to a new face, Alberto Otarola we hear. There may be more changes at cabinet level, but they won't make it to this blog now that normal media channels are closely covering the whole shebang now. IKN signing out.