By Carlos Noriega on July 4, 2022
Pedro Castillo
The crisis in Pedro Castillo’s government is worsening. Less than a month before the rural teacher and trade unionist who came to power as candidate of the left completes his first year in the presidency, the right wing, which from the first day of the government has bet on the coup, accelerates its plans to remove him from office and assault the power from the Congress it controls.
The instability of the government is accentuated by the destabilizing maneuvers of the right wing, which in its coup plans has the support of the big media, but also by the responsibility of a presidential administration that has moved away from its proposals for change, wanders inoperative and lacking direction, is stained by allegations of corruption, adds errors and failed appointments, and is weakened from within by sectarian attitudes and divisions in the governing party.
In a new offensive against the government, the parliamentary right wing seeks to disqualify the president and the vice-president, Dina Boluarte, removing them from their posts in order to take power. If both fall, the head of the government would be assumed by whoever at that time holds the presidency of the Congress -currently the position is in the hands of the legislator of the Acción Popular party, María del Carmen Alva, very close to Fujimorism and other ultra-right sectors, although in the last week of this month the parliamentary board of directors must be renewed, which will undoubtedly remain in the hands of the right wing-, thus the coup promoted by the extreme right would be consummated.
As part of this plan, a few days ago, the Congressional Oversight Commission, presided by the pro-Fujimori Héctor Ventura, approved a report accusing Castillo of constitutional infringement for refusing to testify before that commission in a corruption investigation, and for the meetings he held at the beginning of his term in the house of a friend, outside the official agenda and without informing about those meetings. The accusation points out that in those meetings there were meetings with businessmen who later won bids.
Videos show the lobbyist Karelim López, under judicial investigation for her intervention in the bidding process to build a bridge in which the payment of bribes has been denounced, entering the house where Castillo was receiving visitors. The president denies that both have coincided in that place. The report of this parliamentary commission states that Castillo would head a criminal organization to direct the delivery of public works tenders.
The president denies the charges. The parliamentary commission admits in its report that it does not have proof of Castillo’s guilt, but only indications and suspicions that must be investigated -they are already being investigated by the prosecutor’s office-, but it still jumps to accuse him.
Treason
Before this accusation, another constitutional accusation was presented in Congress against the president for the absurd charge of treason for having declared in a journalistic interview his sympathy with facilitating Bolivia’s access to the sea, a declaration in which there was no mention of ceding sovereignty and which did not lead to any government decision. An accusation that reveals the desperation of the right wing to find any reason to remove Castillo.
The coup right wing knows it does not have the 87 votes -two thirds of the 130-member unicameral Parliament- to remove Castillo from office alleging “moral incapacity”, something it has already tried unsuccessfully on two occasions, so now it resorts to the strategy of impeachment for an alleged constitutional violation to disqualify him from office and remove him from the presidency.
In order to approve the constitutional accusation, 87 votes are not required, but only a simple majority of 66 votes, which the ultra-right wing headed by Fujimorism that promotes the parliamentary coup hopes to achieve in this new case. The risk for Castillo is high.
Boluarte in the spotlight
If it succeeds in removing Castillo, the right wing needs to get rid of the vice-president as well in order to take power. That is why Boluarte has been subjected to a constitutional accusation accusing her of having held a position as Minister of Development and Social Inclusion in the board of directors of the Apurimac Departmental Club, which groups migrants from that region who live in Lima, as is her case, when the Constitution prohibits a minister to hold any other position except teaching.
The vice-president defends herself by pointing out that when she was appointed minister she resigned from her functions in the mentioned club and that the subsequent steps she took were exclusively for administrative regularization in order to transfer her position. In Congress, it is not the arguments that are important, but the strength of the votes and the obsessive eagerness of the right wing to overthrow the Castillo government.
While the right wing advances in the objective of closing the circle of the parliamentary coup, the ruling party is divided. The secretary general of the ruling Peru Libre (PL) party, Vladimir Cerron, publicly demanded Castillo to resign from the party, accusing him of acting to break the ruling party’s bench to form his own political group and for not fulfilling his campaign promises.
Under Cerron’s threat, Castillo resigned this week from PL. The PL bench has had successive divisions in this first year of government. Of the 37 parliamentarians with which the government began, only 16 legislators remain in PL loyal to Cerrón. Those who resigned have dispersed forming other benches that support the government. Castillo promotes the formation of a new party, the Partido Magisterial.
Encerrona
The rupture of Cerron and PL with Castillo became evident this week when Cerronist parliamentarians voted together with the right wing to censure Interior Minister Dimitri Senmache, who has been forced to leave office less than two months after assuming it. He was accused, without evidence, of having allowed the escape of former Transport Minister Juan Silva and a nephew of Castillo, who are under judicial investigation and under preventive arrest on charges of corruption in public works tenders. Senmache is the fourth minister censured by Congress in less than a year of government.
Cerrón plays to the radicalism of the left, but on more than one occasion he has become an ally of the parliamentary ultra-right, adding his votes to the approval of ultra-conservative norms against gender equality policies and now to actions to weaken the government. Cerrón’s sectarianism has blocked government alliances with other progressive sectors that would have strengthened it and has contributed decisively to its isolation.
The secretary general of PL wanted the government only for his party, and now that he has lost positions in the Executive he removes Castillo from PL and votes together with the coup leaders to dismiss a minister, which has been a hard blow to the government. The votes of Cerronismo against the Interior Minister are a warning to Castillo of what could happen to him if he does not give in to their pressure to give more power to Cerron and PL.
The president is left more isolated and weakened -a process that seems to be advancing without remedy- while the right wing pushes from Congress the accelerator of its coup plans, which threatens not only Castillo, but democracy if that ultra-right wing achieves its goal of capturing all power.
Carlos Noriega is a correspondent in Peru for Radio France International and Página12