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Peru, between the umpteenth cabinet of Pedro Castillo and the institutional crisis

2022-08-10T11:09:15.736Z


65% of the population calls for general elections, but 47% believe that after them the Andean country would continue the same or worse


Analysts and the street see in Peru a president and a Congress with high citizen disapproval, no desire to define a consensus agenda, and determined to stay in office, despite the fact that 65% of Peruvians, according to a published survey this month, he awaits general elections to get the country out of the quagmire.

With six cabinet changes made on Friday, President Pedro Castillo hopes to cushion attacks from the parliamentary opposition that began a year ago.

The initial questions were due to the poor management of the rural teacher, since he has replaced dozens of ministers in a few months —seven interior ministers, and four

premiers

, for example—, but now five investigations by the Prosecutor's Office have been added to the president already his environment for corruption.

"We have reached a point of no return: there is a set of incentives for a polarizing dynamic, the parties and the government act reactively, and the stalling of dialogue can compromise the democratic system," says political scientist Adriana Urrutia, president of the Asociación Civil Transparencia, an NGO specialized in electoral observation.

The conservative majority in the Peruvian Parliament has tried, since December 2017, to remove three presidents through the figure of the so-called vacancy due to permanent moral incapacity, a condition without a precise definition that requires 87 votes (in a chamber of 130).

Peru has had more than four years of political instability due to parliamentary obstruction that has been answered, for example in 2020, with the closure of Congress.

Castillo has gotten rid of the vacancy on two occasions and, for a couple of weeks, when five investigations were accumulated, the opposition has invoked the vacancy again, and has asked for his resignation.

Although some parliamentarians and lawyers consider that a court could suspend him from his functions, according to how the investigations in the Public Ministry progress.

Demonstrators against the Government of Pedro Castillo, remain outside the Office of the Prosecutor of the Nation, in Lima (Peru), on August 4, 2022. Paolo Aguilar (EFE)

The academic notes that Peru is going through "a very complex scenario where an essential component of the democratic system - the presidential institution - loses legitimacy and puts at risk the trust of citizens in the system as a whole."

“In order to gain political returns and build an agenda, both powers [Congress and the Executive] make confrontation the agenda of their management and that affects the system because they do not meet the needs of the population or define priorities to solve the country's problems. ”, points out Urrutia.

”The confrontation between the powers of the State is going to continue and this does not affect the resolution of the crisis.

Instead of taking responsibility for the role that citizenship has conferred on them, they spend their time making their counterparts lose their legitimacy,” questions the political scientist.

The constant dynamic of attacks and counter-reforms in the last year has left a balance of 85% disapproval of Parliament's performance, and 67% disapproval of Castillo, according to the same IEP survey, released this Sunday.

Last Saturday, thousands of university students marched in seven regional capitals, in protest against a law recently approved by the government and the opposition.

The norm annuls the superintendence of quality of university education and favors congressmen who have businesses -universities of poor quality- closed for not meeting minimum standards of higher education.

"The role of an obstructionist opposition has consequences: citizens perceive that parliament does not play the role it has to play," notes the political scientist and university professor.

The NGO Transparency is one of 150 civil organizations that since last week has formed a coalition to promote early general elections;

however, according to the IEP survey, 47% believe that Peru would continue the same or worse with that exit, and 42% believe that the situation would be better.

Cabinet Settings

The president appointed six new ministers on Friday and kept Prime Minister Aníbal Torres, who had resigned in the middle of the week, a decision that he had already made public since May, after a wave of protests against the rise in the cost of living .

Despite the fact that the lawyer has corroded his weight as a government spokesman and has been severely criticized due to statements in favor of Hitler and attacks on the press, Castillo has no more trusted men to turn to.

The main changes occurred in the Economy and Foreign Affairs portfolios.

The new Minister of Economy is Kurt Burneo, a heterodox economist who was Vice Minister of Finance, Minister of Production during the government of Ollanta Humala and director of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru and the IDB in Washington.

He replaces Carlos Graham, a career ministry official.

In the 2021 second round electoral campaign, Burneo declined to be part of Castillo's technical team because he posed two conditions: publicly distance himself from the Leninist leftist politician Vladimir Cerrón and modify economic policy proposals.

Cerrón is the founder and leader of the party that invited Castillo to be a presidential candidate last year, and invited him to withdraw from it in June.

The new minister has indicated that his priority will be "to restore the confidence of economic agents" to achieve an economic growth rate greater than 2.2%, the indicator projected for this year.

President Pedro Castillo (l) congratulates Kurt Burneo, after the latter was sworn in as his Minister of Economy in Lima, on August 5, 2022.VIDAL TARQUI (AFP)

In addition, the president has appointed an ultra-conservative lawyer as the new foreign minister, who last year was part of the disinformation campaign that claimed that there was electoral fraud in Castillo's victory.

Miguel Rodríguez McKay, contrary to the Escazú Agreement on access to information, has replaced the jurist and former magistrate of the Constitutional Court César Landa, who in 2021 was Peru's candidate to be a judge of the Inter-American Court.

Minister Geiner Alvarado, one of the four that the president has maintained since last year's inaugural cabinet, went from the Housing and Construction office to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, one of those that manages the largest public budget, and which has several former officials under tax investigation, starting with former minister Juan Silva, a fugitive since May.

Lawyer Alejandro Salas, who has been Minister of Culture since February, and who is one of the chief squires of the Head of State in public debate, is now Minister of Labor.

The official is not a specialist in any of these sectors.

On the other hand, Congresswoman Betssy Chávez, one of the most loyal to Castillo — former Minister of Labor, censored in Parliament — was sworn in as the new head of Culture.

The engineer César Paniagua took an oath in the portfolio of Housing and Construction that Alvarado left.

insufficient changes

Although the political trajectory of the new Minister of Economy -the most solid of the three new members of the cabinet- may not be enough to tackle the dimension of the problems that affect Peru.

University professor and analyst Fernando Loayza points out that the senior official has more political experience than his predecessor and could present a clear message in the face of the inflationary crisis.

"He has been a spokesman for economic issues in presidential campaigns and there will be a difference because he will be more publicly active, and it will be better: until now there has not been a clear message on how to deal with inflation," says Loayza, professor at the Faculty of Global Law of Jindal University (India) and doctoral researcher at Yale University.

For Loayza, Burneo's experience will make it easier for him to identify measures "that allow showing a government that takes the initiative to face the crisis of inflation, food, and the economic crisis in general."

However, the academic points to other problems that are beyond the Ministry of Economy and that will continue to affect the sector and the country.

“Right now we need an infrastructure

shock

, but we have a Ministry of Transport with serious questions [investigations for corruption in contracts], having such a large project portfolio under its charge and such a leading role for economic recovery.

In addition, a Ministry of Agriculture that after three attempts can only buy fertilizers to reactivate a key sector to reactivate employment: agriculture.

Added to this is the extremely poor management of social conflicts that causes many mining projects to be paralyzed, regardless of whether the claims [of the population to the mining companies] are fair or unfair.

And this affects tax collection,” added Loayza.

Arrest warrant against Castillo's sister-in-law

At the end of Tuesday afternoon, a group of police officers and prosecutors waited almost an hour to enter the Government Palace with a preliminary arrest warrant for 15 days for the president's sister-in-law, Yennifer Paredes Navarro, as part of a money laundering investigation. of assets in a criminal organization, in the alleged irregular awarding of public works contracts.

As part of the investigation, two brothers, owners of a Cajamarca contracting company where Paredes worked, and José Medina, the mayor of the Anguia district, located in Chota, the province where the rural teacher was born and lived before he died, have already been arrested. be president. 


The Lima press reports that the former Secretary General of the Government Palace, Bruno Pacheco, has revealed to the team of prosecutors against corruption in power that Medina would be the "cashier" of President Castillo.


The court order also includes the seizure of property, computers or documents linked to the crime.

Until the early hours of the night, the sister-in-law of the head of state had not been located.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-08-10

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