How do you protect perl from special interests without a pumpking?

The number of hackers who have direct commit access to the perl source code repository is fairly limited (and limited to trust-worthy people), so the chances of abuse are rather small. And don't forget that we use a version control system, which makes it rather easy for the next pumpking to revert any potential damage.

Also note that the stable 5.10.* branch still has a pumpking, so we're not entirely leader-less.

I can only hope P5P has enough oversight to bridge the immediate gap.

I'm sure they have. I mean the pumpking is not the only sensible core hacker ;-)