Peruvian President Pedro Castillo had to drive back to the country this Friday (29) to avoid being impeached by Congress, after bad weather prevented him from traveling by plane.
The president was in Ecuador to head a binational cabinet with the country’s president, Guillermo Lasso, in the city of Loja, 264 km from the border with Peru. As his aircraft was unable to take off, the Peruvian underwent a five-hour journey to the Peruvian border.
Castillo managed to arrive an hour before the deadline for permission given by Parliament to visit the neighboring country, which ended at midnight (2 pm on Saturday, BrasÃlia time). If he arrived after that time, the opponents who control the Legislature would have a pretext to proceed with the impeachment, since the Peruvian Constitution does not contemplate exceptions for meteorological reasons.
The leftist thus managed to avoid yet another presidential vacancy motion, which would be the third in his nine months in power. The measure is a kind of impeachment, although it is a distinct legal figure, which points out the “moral inability” to govern.
In December and March, the Peruvian was the target of two other actions of the kind, which ended up being rejected in Parliament for not reaching the necessary votes.
Since the leftist took office, the administration has been marked by a tough confrontation between the Executive and the Legislative, whose main reflection was the ministerial changes: not counting occasional changes, for different reasons, Castillo had to form four cabinets.
The legal form of the vacancy motion has been questioned because of the number of times it has been used in recent years, leaving the impression that, deep down, Peru is not governed (or governable) by anyone.
The article of the Constitution that defines it started to be invoked at the beginning of the political crisis in which the country plunged from 2016. Since then, six motions have been presented, two of them against President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (on the second, in 2018, he resigned before the vote) and MartÃn Vizcarra, who succeeded him, from two others; he ended up away.
