Peruvian Congress submits requests for Castillo’s impeachment and suspension

Plunged into a political crisis, the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, saw Congress launch two new cards against his administration in two days.

This Tuesday (29), a group of parliamentarians led by Edward Málaga filed the third vacancy motion against the leftist leader, accused of moral incapacity to govern. The mechanism is a kind of impeachment, even if it is a distinct legal figure.

The day before, another deputy, Esdras Medina, had already presented a suspension motion, which would remove the president for 12 months so that actions that run against him in court can be judged.

The eventual acceptance of the vacancy process must be analyzed by Congress within ten days. The total support obtained for the submission of the request, however, is less than the minimum necessary to remove the president, 87 votes. In the two previous motions, in December last year and March this year, the opposition failed to gather votes, keeping Castillo in office.

The suspension motion still does not have a deadline to be analyzed, but it reinforced the intensification of tensions between the Legislative and Executive. Both sides accuse each other of plotting a coup d’état to dissolve Congress or overthrow the president, depending on your view.

Last Friday (25), the president announced a renewal of his cabinet, the fifth in 16 months of his mandate – a mandatory process after the resignation of the prime minister, Aníbal Torres. Former congresswoman Betssy Chávez was nominated for the post, but both she and the new ministers will have to obtain a vote of confidence from the Legislature within a month, in the midst of this climate of confrontation.

Castillo has been trying to fulfill a campaign promise to form a Constituent Assembly, but for now he has not found an echo for this in Congress, and Torres’ departure is directly linked to friction over the issue.

The Peruvian constitution states that if the government is defeated in a confidence vote, the president must recompose his cabinet. If the process is repeated, the Chief Executive can then dissolve Parliament and call new legislative elections.

This step already took place in 2019, under then-president Martín Vizcarra, after congressmen rejected two confidence votes. The following year, however, the new configuration of the Legislature managed to remove him from power amid accusations of corruption, crowning a chronic political upheaval that is repeated in Castillo’s term.

There are currently two constitutional charges against the leftist being debated in Congress. The first is for treason, based on the idea of ​​calling a plebiscite to ask the population if they would agree with the granting of access to the sea for Bolivia.

The second alleges that the president is the leader of a criminal organization that seeks to obtain bribes in exchange for public works contracts. If the indictments are completed, Castillo could lose office through a vacancy motion.

Since the beginning of management, in mid-2021, the leftist leader has struggled to govern and form alliances in Congress – to which protests in the streets have been added this year.

According to the Institute of Peruvian Studies, Castillo currently has 28% of popularity, but the same survey shows that more than 80% of the population is dissatisfied with Congress.

“People don’t want something like the instability caused by PPK drops [Pedro Pablo Kuczynski] and from Vizcarra. Nor is an unknown deputy wearing the sash again,” says political analyst Rosa María Palacios, referring to Manuel Merino’s fleeting five-day Presidency. “Politics were no longer in high demand when Castillo was elected, and now the representatives is even worse.”

In this context, even street demonstrations, which peaked in 2019, never returned to the pre-pandemic volume. “The list of problems has gotten so long that protesting seems less important.”