Dina Boluarte is waiving her term of office in 2026 to try to quell popular uprisings that have already claimed two deaths as ex-President Pedro Castillo heads to trial
The declared intention of the President of Peru to exhaust the legislature until 2026 has been shattered in the direction of social peace in the country. Dina Boluarte has announced that she will introduce the accompanying bill to Congress to call elections in April 2024. It is her response to the thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets in the past twenty-four hours to demand an advance on the polls after the arrest of former president Pedro Castillo for his failed coup.
Peru is facing increasing instability. Apart from the president’s announcement, the interior minister, César Cervantes, has also raised that the head of government intends to declare a state of emergency throughout the national territory in the face of widespread protests and roadblocks. Hundreds of people have blocked the Pan-American highway in Huaura province, while farmers and miners in the center and east of the country have taken to the streets and teachers’ unions are preparing strikes in the sector.
Boluarte took office last Wednesday and has barely managed to keep social peace for four days. What were initially isolated mobilizations of Castillo’s supporters and opponents, many of them in Lima, became a popular outburst this weekend in the Apurímac region, later spreading to Arequipa and Ica. Apurímac Governor Baltazar Lantarón Núñez publicly asked the president to close the Congress and begin drafting a new constitution, while several labor and social organizations declared an indefinite strike.
The protests have in some cases led to serious clashes with the National Police. The riots on Sunday killed two youths aged 15 and 18 and injured some 30 people, some from the firing of bullets by the security forces. In a spiral of violence and repression, a police station was attacked and two police officers were kidnapped and paraded in public for hours. A large group of people also tried to occupy the airport of Andahuaylas. The 15-year-old boy was killed in this incident. The Congressional Council of Spokespersons convened the President of the Council of Ministers, Pedro Angulo, and the defense and interior ministers to report on the altercations, the cause of the two deaths and the possible excessive force in the use of force by police.
Coincidentally, Andahuaylas already recorded a military uprising in 2005 led by the ethnocacerista leader Antauro Humala. The command led a revolt at the head of 150 armed reservists to force the overthrow of President Alejandro Toledo. The insurgents took over the department’s police headquarters, though their riot was eventually crushed, leaving a balance of four security officers dead.
Boluarte explained today that his decision to bring forward the elections “interprets in the broadest sense the will of the bourgeoisie”. As of now, Congress must promote a series of constitutional amendments ahead of the election to accommodate the bill, a period the administration also plans to use to introduce a law to reform the political system. According to the president, the legal initiative aims to encourage “more efficient” and “transparent” governance, political parties “legitimized through citizen participation” and the end of “all practices of corruption”. “I call on all the political forces of the country, of the regions and provinces, the authorities, civil society and the Peruvian people to participate in this process,” said the head of government, seeking “a united Peru , free and with social justice.
For now, it is Parliament itself that must lead by example. The emergency assembly met on Sunday to consider the report of the Attorney General, Patricia Benavides, on the investigations into former President Pedro Castillo, as well as his former Prime Minister Betssy Chávez and former minister of the Interior Willy Huerta ended with a fistfight between two deputies with opposing ideologies. Congressman Pasión Dávila, from the Magistrate’s Bloc, very close to the former president, punched Representative Juan Burgos, from the right-wing party Avanza País, in the back. Pedro Castillo’s party, Perú Libre, and its partners believe that the arrest of the former coup leader does not meet legal requirements. Congress, despite the incidents, passed a motion to remove Castillo’s presidential prerogative to submit to a political impeachment, allowing him to go directly to a criminal case. The left-wing leader is in custody until Wednesday, when the judge must decide whether to release him until trial for rebellion or keep him in prison.
Source: La Verdad
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