Castillo overcomes his first political battle in the Congress of Peru

Pedro Castillo, wearing a hat, next to the Minister of Economy (to Castillo's left) and Prime Minister Guido Bellido, to his right, around the Congress, this Thursday in Lima.Martin Mejia / AP

Pedro Castillo has overcome his first major obstacle as president of Peru this Friday.

Congress has approved the cabinet of ministers it had proposed, headed by Prime Minister Guido Bellido, which at the time was widely criticized for including some radical politicians.

However, he has finally won the trust of the majority of the chamber, with 73 votes in favor and 50 against.

After a hesitant start, the rural teacher can score his first political achievement.

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Bellido, his right hand, has been in charge of explaining the Government's roadmap to the rest of the congressmen. Surprisingly, it has not included the creation of an assembly to reform the Peruvian Constitution, the most debated and controversial proposal with which it has come to power. Instead, the prime minister put the emphasis on vaccination and the reactivation of the economy decimated by the pandemic.

The opposition is very critical of a possible new Constitution because they believe that it could be a way to install the authoritarian policies of Cuba and Venezuela in Peru. That argument has been repeated in the plenary debate after almost three hours of Bellido's intervention. Behind all these discussions is always Vladimir Cerrón, the president of Peru Libre, the party under whose initials Castillo appeared. Cerrón constantly pressures the president, via Twitter and his political operators - the main one, Bellido - to maintain a radical left discourse and place its leaders in key executive positions despite not always meeting the requirements of the position.

In reality, the president came to power thanks to the final impulse of an alliance with the moderate left, represented by the former presidential candidate Verónika Mendoza of Juntos por el Perú: to that political group belong the Minister of Economy, Pedro Francke, and the Minister of the woman, Anahí Durand.

In his appearance in Parliament, Bellido called for unity, but also recalled that the Castillo government has promised changes to its voters, the poor and the descendants of native peoples postponed in 200 years of an independent republic. "I stand before you to invite you to put down our differences and together contribute to solving one of the most serious political, social, environmental and health crises of the last decades," said the prime minister. The Executive announced that it intends to finish vaccinating those over 18 years of age against covid-19 at the end of 2021 and continue with minors and for this the Ministry of Foreign Affairs must ensure sufficient doses for the remainder of this year and the next.

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Bellido assured that to face the third wave of the new coronavirus, health centers will expand 24-hour care and coordinate the opening of free oxygen supply points.

As of Wednesday, more than 198,000 people have died in Peru from covid-19 and one in 100 Peruvian children has lost their father, mother or primary caregiver during the pandemic.

The country has the highest rate of orphans in the world in this period: 10.2 per 1,000 children, adding up to 1.13 million affected, according to The Lancet.

"We cannot allow existence to become a privilege," added the official, recalling that Peruvians went into debt to buy oxygen at high prices between last January and May. The prime minister announced that the government will unify the health system - today there are five subsystems of services that are disconnected from each other - and will present a bill for a commission to prepare a proposal for a new pension system. In addition, he offered an increase in the minimum wage and the repeal of the perfect suspension - a labor figure for which thousands of companies stopped paying their workers in the pandemic.

Bellido recalled that before the pandemic there were 75% of informal workers, for this reason he said that the Government will create an advisory service for entrepreneurs so that 600,000 companies can register in the next five years. Among other initiatives for economic reactivation, he indicated that they will rethink credits for the tourism sector, not only for companies, but also for tourist guides and porters, hard affected by the pandemic.

Peru Libre has the first parliamentary minority (37 seats) and three parties are in the toughest opposition: the Fujimori Popular Force (24 seats), the far-right Renovación Popular (nine seats) and the right-wing Avanza País (ten seats). During the debate, opponents reiterated their criticism of "failed or outdated models" such as Bolivia, Cuba or Venezuela, which they believe Castillo will take as a reference. They also question Minister Bellido because the Prosecutor's Office is investigating him for apology for terrorism, and the Minister of Labor, Iber Maravi, whose name appears in a police report from the 1980s on sabotage of electrical infrastructure.

Additionally, one of the congressmen of Peru Libre closest to Cerrón faces a trial for collaboration with terrorism-, for this reason several opposition congressmen recriminate them that they are in favor of the disappeared terrorist and Maoist group Sendero Luminoso. Since the electoral campaign, and again this Thursday and Friday in Congress, Castillo and his now ministers have demarcated with the violent. For example, the parliamentarian Adriana Tudela, from Avanza País, said in the debate that "the Cabinet that they have presented is an affront to the memory of Peruvians generated by Marxism-Leninism, a thought that today those in power happily profess" .

Bellido was not ambiguous this time. He reiterated that neither President Castillo nor anyone from the Government feels sympathy for the armed movements. "Not only are we not terrorists, we are against any measure or subversive action," he insisted. In the plenary session on Friday, the spirits calmed down when the parliamentarians listened to the interventions of the Minister of Economy, Pedro Francke; the Minister of Health, Francisco Cevallos; and those of Education and Women and Vulnerable Populations, among others.

The economist Francke stressed that for this year the fiscal deficit target is lower than that set by the outgoing government, which ensures that financial rating agencies keep Peru's country risk low, "lower than Colombia."

Cevallos was applauded when he reported that 13 million vaccines will arrive in September and that funds will be allocated to pay first level care personnel to extend the hours of attention in health centers and pay labor debts to personnel.

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