Ricardo Belmont

In late-1989, he announced his candidacy for the Lima provincial mayoralty as an independent. His political party, OBRAS (Works) alluded to the need for public works in Lima and the overall lack of progress as mayor by Jorge del Castillo, who was seen more as a lackey of Peruvian President Alan García than as an effective mayor. Although he supported Mario Vargas Llosa's Presidential candidacy, he chose to oppose Vargas Llosa's party's chosen mayoral candidate, Juan Inchaustegui. Belmont's charisma developed as a TV host and his lack of political affiliation helped him earn the people's vote, and he began to start his public-works program, which included several road and community improvement projects detailed below.

Initially Belmont and the new Peruvian President, Alberto Fujimori, were seen as comrades in arms because of their common political backgrounds as independents. The fiercely independent Belmont, however, drawing on his business skills, was able to get funds from several private enterprises to fund his programs.

Among the many public works projects he completed include:

• Intercambio Vial Norte (Northern Interchange): was a paving of Avenida Universitaria linking Carabayllo and San Miguel districts, with an interchange with Panamericana Norte along the way.
• Intercambio Vial Este (Eastern Interchange): was a combination of two new bridges spanning the Rimac River linking El Agustino directly with San Juan de Lurigancho
• Intercambio Vial Sur (Southern Interchange): was an actual interchange between Panamericana Sur, Av. Circunvalacion and Av. Javier Prado that eliminated traffic light crossings.
• Several losa deportivas (sports grounds) for poor communities, mostly concrete fields for mini-soccer, basketball, and squash.

Re-elected to a second term in 1993, Belmont and Fujimori had a falling out, due to resentment from Fujimori at Belmont's former support of Vargas Llosa. Fujimori, through his party-controlled Congress, issued Legislative Decree No. 776, by which provincial mayors were forced to distribute their government income down to the districtal halls under them (particularly from rich to poor distrital municipalities in the interior of the country). This stopped Belmont from pursuing further public works and improvements, and the municipal employees (most of whom were APRA party members left over from the Castillo administration) began turning against him through demonstrations, increasing his unpopularity. He ran for president in the 1995 general elections losing to incumbent President Fujimori and subsequently continued as Mayor of Lima declining to run for re-election in the 1995 Lima local elections and being replaced by Alberto Andrade. For the general elections of 2001, he was invited by the Independent Moralizing Front to run for the first vice-presidency on the presidential roster of Fernando Olivera, however, said presidential candidacy did not win in the elections and came in fourth place.

In the 2006 elections, he ran for Congress in the Lima constituency, as an invited candidate under the Centre Front coalition but he was not elected, but he was summoned to Congress in August 2009 as a replacement for Alberto Andrade (his successor as Mayor of Lima), who died in office and completed the latter's 2006–2011 term.

In November 2015, he agreed to be summoned to run for president of the Republic of Peru in the 2016 elections, by the Siempre Unidos party.[2] However, in January 2016 he announced his resignation from the presidential candidacy because he did not accept pressure on behalf of the party's founder, Felipe Castillo, so that Isaac Humala, the father of then-President Ollanta Humala would be part of the presidential shortlist.

In 2018 he was a candidate for mayor of Lima for the Peru Libertario party. Since 2019 he has become a YouTuber and on his channel he publishes videos analyzing topics such as local politics, geopolitics, progressivism and the popular president of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador.