By Mariana Álvarez Orellana on December 9, 2021
Supporters of Castillo protest coup attempt
The last right-wing intention to impeach the Peruvian president, Pedro Castillo, was shipwrecked between the massive rejection in the streets and the decision of most of the parties to deny their support to the impeachment attempt, but the threat is far from being dissipated and the strategy of the right wing is to keep on striking until it achieves its goal.
This time it did not prosper either and a new story between the rural teacher and leftist trade unionist Pedro Castillo and the Congress ended on Tuesday 7th with the lack of six votes to admit for debate the motion of presidential vacancy under the ambiguous figure of “permanent moral incapacity” against him.
The impeachment operation was the culmination of an offensive of the ultra-right initiated the day Castillo won the elections against Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the imprisoned ex-dictator who was the candidate of the power groups and of the defense of the neoliberal status quo. The accusation against Castillo stands out for the weakness of its arguments, such as pressuring to obtain the promotion of five military officials (which did not happen) and the actions of his ex-secretary in favor of some companies.
They also tried to qualify as “moral incapacity” the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and other typically McCarthyist arguments such as relating him to “terrorism”, and appealing to a vote “against communism” to justify an impeachment.
Two days of meetings of the head of state -who took office just over four months ago- with political representatives of congressional benches dissipated the storm clouds. Of the total of 128 legislators present, only 46 voted in favor (52 were needed), 76 against and 4 abstentions.
The columns of unions, social organizations, progressive parties, converged with their banners and posters repudiating the vacancy and the attempted parliamentary coup, in front of the Congress headquarters, where a small group mobilized by the destitute was isolated and protected by a police cordon on a sidewalk.
Castillo escaped again, but appears weakened by the permanent attacks and the coup plot of the right wing, but also by his mistakes, questioned appointments, the delay in making decisions in moments of crisis and the divisions in his internal front. The ruling party celebrated the result of the vote with the classic “the people united, will never be defeated”.
Various benches of the right wing opposition, which is the majority, did not support the government, but distanced themselves from the coup. The press had speculated that a sector of the ruling Peru Libre (PL) party, divided between support and criticism of the government, could contribute votes to the impeachment process. But the 37 PL legislators voted as a block against the coup, thus avoiding political suicide.
The truth is that the divisions in the ruling party have not been overcome. The secretary general of PL, the Marxist Vladimir Cerrón, questions Castillo for supposedly having moderated and has pointed out that he maintains “deep differences” with his government, but has said that he was not going to lend himself to the coup of the ultra-right.
Sociologist Alberto Adrianzén maintains that the risk of a coup has not been averted, but that the right wing is going to continue in its attempt to remove the president, so the situation in the next months is going to be difficult, since the right wing is not going to lower its guard. “What Castillo must do is to politically confront the right wing, denounce who the coup perpetrators are, mobilize the people in the streets and get rid of that environment”, he said.
Hypocritically, the coup leaders spoke of fighting against corruption, but what they were trying to do was to ensure impunity in the various corruption trials of the leaders of that right-wing coup, such as Keiko Fujimori, who in the coming months must face a trial for money laundering with a request for 30 years in prison.
The racist Peruvian elites, supported by financial power, corruption and the hegemonic media, do not accept losing power, especially not to an Andean peasant who comes from the poorest and most marginalized sectors, and who speaks of exclusion, inequality and changes in power structures.
Mariana Álvarez Orellana is a Peruvian anthropologist, teacher and researcher, analyst associated with the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE).
Source Portal Alba, translation Internationalist 360