Protest against the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, on the day of the bicentennial of his independence, on July 28 in Lima.STRINGER / Reuters
The bicentennial inaugurates its president after a long and painful campaign in which we had to choose between 18 candidates, a generous number in contrast to the paltry offer of personal and partisan attributes.
The political class in Peru, like that of the entire world, I suspect, is sinking into a kind of mediocre well where we voters must take sides more out of fear and rejection of others than out of affinity with one another.
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Recoser Peru
Castillo reiterates his idea of a Constituent Assembly and offers clear rules to the business community: the keys to his speech
Thus, the second round put us between the two worst options: a Marxist-Leninist party presided over by an alleged criminal and the party that stopped any possibility of reform in recent years, led by another alleged criminal.
The electoral situation was summarized in a statistic: Peru is the country that adds the most deaths from covid per number of inhabitants: almost 200,000 people have lost their lives so far in the pandemic, twice the number of victims left by terrorism and war. with Chile together.
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For those who bet on him, the triumph of Pedro Castillo was a historical and symbolic milestone, as he was the first peasant and rural teacher to become president of Peru.
For others it was just the price to pay to end the long game of Fujimori.
But reality begins to show him for what he is, beyond expectations and fears: the representative of the most folkloric, conservative and ideological left, one that is transparent and frontal in its totalitarian plan and its links with Latin American socialism.
Many of us suspected it from before, but it is democracy that put us here.
And that is something that the right-wing elite, so "democratic" today, must accept.
In his first speech as president, Castillo insisted on the creation of a Constituent Assembly to change the Constitution in the midst of an unprecedented health and economic crisis (only 11% of Peruvians consider a new Constitution relevant).
Twenty-four hours later, he liquidated his political capital by presenting a cabinet led by an openly misogynistic, homophobic, and proselytizing member of his party, which is unacceptable in a country deeply marked by terrorism.
Thus, the alliance that brought him to power was broken as soon as he took office.
Already the center is reorganized against him and a certain modern left begins to mark distance.
The country with the most imprisoned and investigated presidents in Latin America is thus celebrating its bicentennial without even knowing what awaits it in the next 20 days.
Castillo had to build alliances and seek consensus with Congress and the different political actors, to solve the main problems of a country in which the number of poor people has increased by 1.8 million in the last year and a half.
The challenge is immense, because he has an unpostponable debt with the weakest and most forgotten, those who chose him.
So far it does the opposite.
Everything indicates that under the hat there would be an incompetent without greater synderesis.
And that's at best.
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