The Congress in Peru rejected, on Tuesday (7), the opening of a process to remove the country’s president, Pedro Castillo, in power for just over four months.
In all, 46 lawmakers voted to depose the president for lack of “moral capacity” to exercise his functions. It needed, however, 51 votes in favor of the process out of a total of 128 congressmen who attended the session. Castillo got 76 votes against opening the process.
This would be the fifth impeachment motion against a Peruvian president in the past four years and recalls similar requests that led to the ouster of leaders Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in 2018 and MartÃn Vizcarra in 2020.
Even if the motion was accepted, advancing the election was considered difficult, as it would be necessary for 87 parliamentarians to vote against Castillo in the next steps to remove him from office. Today, the opposition has a majority in the legislature, and the governing party, Perú Libre, has 37 seats, but the pro-impeachment movement has lost strength in recent weeks.
Perú Libre, the president’s own party, even considered supporting the motion, but on Monday decided to remain faithful to the president and called the process an attempted coup from the right.
The authors of the request are congressmen from the Avanza PaÃs, Renovación Popular and Fuerza Popular parties, which have a total of 43 parliamentarians. The latter is led by Keiko Fujimori, candidate defeated by Castillo in the June elections and daughter of Peruvian dictator Alberto Fujimori, who led the country between 1990 and 2000 and has been imprisoned since 2007 for corruption and crimes against humanity.
Castillo is the target of a scandal of alleged government interference in military promotions, which prompted the impeachment request. He was summoned to testify in this case on December 14th.
The deadlock comes as prosecutors investigate alleged corruption cases committed by Castillo’s advisers, who accused his opponents and “economic interest groups” of conspiring against him.
The alliance formed by the three right-wing parties has, since the end of the elections, in June, discussed the removal of the president. The group accuses Castillo of sabotaging the country’s electoral system, even though the process has been evaluated by electoral authorities and by observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the European Union.
Since taking power in late July, leftist Castillo has struggled to govern. Also in October, the president changed his prime minister and part of the ministerial cabinet in search of greater dialogue with Parliament. The new names were the reason for internal disagreements within the ruling party, but ended up being approved in early November.
Days later, the Peruvian president had to face yet another crisis: the Defense Ministry incumbent, Walter Ayala, presented his resignation after making public information that he had sought promotions for military personnel close to the head of state. He was the tenth minister changed in just over three months of government.
Amid obstacles and layoffs, Castillo is criticized by part of the population, who consider him without direction. The discontent is reflected in the evaluation surveys. One of them, released on the 14th by the French institute Ipsos, pointed out that the president’s disapproval reached 57%.
If removed from office, the leftist leader will be another Peruvian president who has not completed his term in recent years.
In 2018, then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned amid corruption scandals. His deputy, MartÃn Vizcarra, was sworn in and ruled for just over two years before being removed in an impeachment process. On that occasion, Parliament overthrew the chief executive with the same argument with which the opposition is now trying to overthrow Castillo — using as a basis an article of the Constitution that speaks of “moral incapacity”.
Vizcarra was then succeeded by Congressional President Manuel Merino, who was in office for just five days after street protests against his predecessor’s impeachment.
Who remained in power until Castillo’s inauguration was the centrist deputy Francisco Sagasti, who took over with a conciliatory tone and promised elections.
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