For at least five years, Peruvian politics has been living a downward spiral, which reached its lowest point this Wednesday (7), with a crazy attempt at a self-coup by President Pedro Castillo.
In a very ill-conceived move, the politician ordered the dissolution of Congress and decreed a state of emergency. He failed to match everyone. Without support, Castillo was removed a few hours later, by the same Congress he tried to dissolve, with 101 votes (when 87 were needed).
The dismissal confirms the tendency launched by Brazil to nip coup plans by Latin American populists in the bud. The now ex-president ended up being detained by the police; would it be an omen that coup leaders in Brazil will have the same fate?
Peru has long been in political turmoil. Analysts already predicted, then, that the president elected in 2021 – whoever he was – would be the weakest in the country’s recent history, for multiple reasons. The context was one of an economic crisis, with a recession and a 13% drop in GDP compared to the previous year (the worst index in the region after Venezuela), and a health crisis, with the Covid mortality rate three times worse than that of Brazil .
The 2021 election would choose the fifth president in five years, as Pedro Paulo Kuczynski and Martín Vizcarra resigned after having impeachment proceedings open against them.
The political elite was — and still is — in shambles since Lava Jato hit Peruvian soil. Former presidents Alejandro Toledo (2001-2006), Ollanta Humala (2011-2016) and PPK (2016-2018) were arrested on corruption charges involving Odebrecht.
The first was released on bail and lives in the US, the other two are under house arrest. Alan García, twice president (1985-1990 and 2006-2011), killed himself when police announced his arrest.
The 2021 election, therefore, was already one of the lowest points of Peruvian democracy. There were 18 candidates running for the Presidency, and none managed to consolidate as an ideal choice. The second round, then, drew the worst possible scenario, pitting Keiko Fujimori, daughter of dictator Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), against Castillo, a professor and populist union leader who is now confirming himself as a dictator himself.
He went on to the second round with 18% of the votes and ended up elected by a small margin (50.1%, against 49.9%) because his opponent was seen at that moment as a greater evil.
In addition to representing the risk of the closure of Congress —as her father had done—, Keiko echoed the trumpism that, in Brazil, produced Jair Bolsonaro (PL). She was also obsessed with denouncing voter fraud, without any evidence, and ignoring the benefits of quarantine during the pandemic, despite abundant evidence.
Keiko is still accused of commanding a criminal organization of illegal donations for election campaigns and had already been arrested and released three times during the process. She represented, above all, the discredited political elite.
Castillo, however, also showed clear signs of coup d’état. Without any institutional experience and ultraconservative — despite being labeled as a left-wing candidate, as he opposed the right-wing Keiko — he had already spoken openly about dissolving Congress.
“I will not close [o Parlamento], the population itself will. Everything will be with the people. If the people give us power, we will. I hope that this time it will be a different Congress and think of the people before thinking of their interests”, he said still in the campaign, when asked about the possibility of the Legislature not agreeing with him.
That, yes, was a very difficult choice.
With the dismissal, the vice-president, Dina Boluarte, takes over. The first woman to hold the position of President of Peru, she was one of the first leaders to disavow Castillo’s self-coup. Graduated in law, the new leader has several specializations in law and public management and has worked as an extrajudicial conciliator —a curriculum that comes in handy for a country that urgently needs political pacification.
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