The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, survived an impeachment motion nine days ago, but, far from being strengthened, he faces a global challenge once morest him in Congress and in the streets, which are calling for his resignation following violent riots and transportation stoppages.
The front pages of this Wednesday are unanimous and clear: Peru is experiencing the umpteenth crisis with a Congress, mostly opposition, that has not stopped harassing the president during the eight months he has been in office. But now his allies are also beginning to slide towards criticism, while the streets of Lima and other cities are taken over by protesters in the face of the passivity of the authorities.
These are some of the keys to the global challenge to Castillo:
1.- The strike of carriers
It began nine days ago and, despite the fact that it had not been the scene of serious protests until Wednesday, it has become the axis on which the crisis that has Pedro Castillo on the ropes pivots. Today, the violence escalated when a young man who participated in the demonstrations died during a confrontation with the police in the southern region of Ica.
The transporters began a strike due to the global increase in fuel prices, to which the government reacted with a tax exemption that had positive effects and began to deflate the protests, all of them very far from Lima.
The strike was the excuse for Castillo, unexpectedly and at the stroke of midnight, to decree a curfew for Lima and the neighboring province of Callao for this Tuesday, whose reasons he did not explain and which his government later justified in reports that warned of possible looting in the capital.
2.- Protests and looting in Lima
Thousands of Limeños defied that curfew by going to the center of the capital on Tuesday to ask for Castillo’s resignation in a protest that began peacefully but ended with riots, 25 police officers injured and 18 protesters arrested.
In Lima there had been no altercations related to the transport stoppage, but the declaration of the state of emergency and the curfew were enough so that, a few meters from the Legislative Palace, Abancay Avenue became a battlefield between protesters and police officers, where tear gas bombs were crossed in the air with stones and bottles.
The day ended with the assault on the headquarters of the Superior Court of Justice, which according to its president, Elvia Barrios, occurred premeditatedly, attacks on shops and fires on urban furniture, altercations that the security forces watched passively and in the that on occasions they limited themselves to asking the violent to cease their attitude.
3.- Unruly Congress
He has a worse popular image than Pedro Castillo himself, but Congress has become the main political obstacle for the government.
With a clear opposition majority, in just eight months the ruler has had to overcome two impeachment motions (for which Parliament must have two-thirds of the votes), in addition to having questioned him on numerous occasions.
The last time that the open hostility of Congress took shape was on April 1, when the Chamber approved a motion to impeach the Minister of Health, Hernán Condori, forcing Castillo to remove him from office and having to appoint the third incumbent. of that portfolio during his government. All this in the country with the highest death rate in the world from covid-19.
4.- Pedro Castillo and the loss of allies
The president has in the Legislative the votes of Free Peru, Together for Peru and Democratic Peru, which assure him a weak balance that guarantees that the opposition does not cross the line of 87 votes necessary to remove him and that might be threatened following the strong criticism the president received on Tuesday from some allies.
Among the criticisms received, those formulated by the president of the Council of Ministers between October 6 and January 31, Mirtha Vasquéz, who defined the curfew as an “arbitrary measure” and asked the president to “take charge » and to look for democratic solutions.
Another of his main supporters during the last electoral round, the politician Verónika Mendoza, leader of the progressive coalition Together for Peru, stated on Twitter that “the government has not only betrayed its promises of change, but now repeats the method of ‘conflict resolution’ of the right”.
5.- The mobilization promises to continue
The scenes experienced with thousands of protesters defying the curfew show a mobilized opposition in the streets of Lima and its metropolitan area.
The anger shown, beyond the attacks once morest buildings in the center of Lima, indicates that there is a large group of citizens who do not want Castillo to continue in the Presidency, either because they have changed their opinion in recent months or because they did not accept his victory. election following the polarized 2021 campaign.
In addition to the pots and pans that are heard from time to time in the capital, the Unitary Union of Workers in Education of Peru (Sutep) called for a demonstration for this Thursday in Lima, to which the dissatisfied can join, spurred on by the fragility that shows the ruler, to try to force his removal.
