The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced this Thursday (30) the resignation of the party to which he belonged, Perú Libre. The decision was taken at the request of the legend itself, which now acts in the opposition.
Castillo is accused by representatives of Peru Libre of not having put into practice the party’s program and not having fulfilled the electoral promises. Instead, the caption claims that the president, in office since last July, has been implementing the “loser neoliberal program.”
“We are definitely not a pro-government caucus,” said lawmaker Waldemar Cerrón, head of the party and brother of party leader Vladimir Cerrón. He said Peru Libre would act as a “propositional opposition” rather than what he called an “obstructionist opposition” of the right-wing parties that dominate the Peruvian Congress.
The differences between the Marxist-Leninist Peru Libre and Castillo became evident on Tuesday (28), after the party asked the president to “irrevocably” resign his militancy under threat of expulsion.
“I presented to the National Electoral Court my irrevocable waiver of affiliation to the Peru Libre political party. This decision is due to my responsibility as president of 33 million Peruvians,” Castillo wrote on his social media on Thursday. “I have respect for the party and its foundations built in the campaign. [eleitoral de 2021]”.
The rows between Perú Libre and Castillo come as a congressional commission investigating the president for corruption must recommend opening a constitutional indictment against him, which could lead to a request for his removal from office.
In addition to breaking electoral promises, Perú Libre also accuses Castillo of undermining party “unity and discipline” after the division of the pro-government bench into three blocks. The party now has just 16 of the 37 parliamentarians it won in the 2021 elections, and has become the main minority in a Congress where no party has a majority.
Castillo, a 52-year-old rural teacher, shares a conservative view with Keiko Fujimori, his defeated rival in the presidential election. He is against gay marriage, abortion and what he calls “gender ideology”. He was also aligned with the daughter of former Peruvian autocrat Alberto Fujimori on rejecting the entry into the country of more Venezuelan refugees, who, in his view, “steal jobs from Peruvians”.
If, on the one hand, he is conservative in relation to civil rights, Castillo defends the refoundation of the State and the country’s economic model. During the election campaign, he stated that the economy must be built from the “bottom up” and mentioned, among the areas that can be nationalized, mining — a major source of Peru’s export products. He was born in Tacabamba, in the province of Chota, in north of the country.
