Self-coup, impeachment and imprisonment: the four hours in Peru that led to the downfall of Pedro Castillo

Peru has become the first female president in the country’s history from a failed coup attempt in just four hours, and her biggest challenge will be to finish off the impeachment and arrest of Pedro Castillo. The political truce is fragile and makes it difficult for the president, who has no support or political experience, to arrive.

At exactly noon in Lima, then-President Pedro Castillo surprised him with an extreme announcement: Parliament would be dissolved, a curfew would be imposed, and the country would be governed by decrees until new legislative elections were held and a new election was held. Constitution.

The reason for the maneuver seemed to be to avoid a parliamentary session, scheduled for three hours, in which deputies would try to impose the dismissal of Pedro Castillo for the third time in a year and a half in office.

“But that’s not the main reason. There weren’t enough votes to dismiss him. Pedro Castillo tried to avoid the Justice’s investigations against him. It was clearly a failed self-coup attempt, but it wasn’t a self-coup coup because the president is a communist and the Constituent Assembly wants it. The self-coup was due to corruption. He made a rookie mistake,” he explains. RFI Peruvian political scientist Carlos Meléndez of the University of Chile Diego Portales.

The prosecution is investigating Pedro Castillo in six cases, most of them for alleged corruption in exchange for public works. According to a survey by the Ipsos consultancy, 65% of Peruvians believe Castillo was involved in corruption cases.

“The only way to avoid corruption investigations was to stage a self-coup. Castillo believed that 30% of the popular support he had would take to the streets, but that didn’t happen. There is no ‘Castillismo’ in Peru,” Meléndez says.

Pedro Castillo announced on a network that the “announcement of the dissolution of Congress and the establishment of an “exceptional state of emergency government” included “a reorganization of the justice system: the Judiciary, the Public Ministry, the National Board of Justice, and the Constitutional Court” on national radio and TV.

Institutions reacted

But the trick was short-lived. According to Foreign Minister César Landa, just 30 minutes later, at 12:30, several ministers began to resign from their posts as they realized that “the Constitution had been violated”. Violation of the law” according to Economy Minister Kurt Burneo, or “violation of the constitutional order” according to Harold Forsyth, Peru’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).

Supreme Court chief Francisco Morales Saraiva was more explicit, describing the maneuver as a “coup.” “No one owes obedience to an usurping government,” he stated.

And the first to fail to comply with the dissolution of Parliament was the Speaker of the Legislature, José Williams, who called for an emergency session. The political hearing, which was planned to be held at 15.00, was taken to the emergency session at 13.00. And if there hadn’t been the 87 votes required for an impeachment earlier, the self-coup attempt made it happen.

At 1:30 pm, the Armed Forces and Police stepped in to reject Pedro Castillo’s maneuver and to announce his support to Congress. Castillo had already been isolated. Even vice president Dina Boluarte accused him of “disrupting the constitutional order” and classified his political boss’s statement as a “coup”. The unanimity was for democracy.

open layoff

At 1:40 p.m., a few minutes after it began, the parliamentary session, by 101 votes out of 130 deputies, dismissed President Pedro Castillo for “moral incompetence” (the Peruvian parliament is unicameral).

The voting rate was also aimed at preventing Pedro Castillo from leaving the country. While the current former president sought asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Lima in November 2019, in a move reminiscent of Bolivian Evo Morales’s defection to his Mexican ally Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Pedro Castillo was arrested and could face death. Up to 20 years in prison.

Less than four hours after the dissolution of parliament was announced, at 3:55 p.m., vice president Dina Boluarte took office, becoming the first female president in Peruvian history.

“A truce is opening between political forces. The people of Lima (Lima residents) are happy; Andean people (rurals) are dissatisfied. Andean people want all politicians out of power. The people of Lima wanted Castillo gone”, compares Carlos Melendez.

Peru has two vice presidents. The 60-year-old lawyer took second place, but took office after first vice president Vladimir Cerrón was barred from holding public office for corruption, using the party for illegal money laundering.

“There was an attempted coup that had no repercussions in the institutions of democracy or on the streets. I am assuming the presidency with great responsibility and my first decision is to gather the broadest contingent of all Peruvians. Dina Boluarte said that her government is fragile and her biggest challenge is to end Pedro Castillo’s term in July 2016. He asked knowing that he would.

fragile governance

“The main problem in Peru is the lack of political representation. Peruvians vote for someone, not for someone. The relationship of representation ends immediately after the act of voting. More likely, the new president will only have support for a time,” predicts Meléndez .

“Nobody believes his term will end. I suspect it won’t either. Dina Boluarte will have to juggle to get a political deal. Congress hasn’t changed. That’s a problem because it’s a corrupt Congress too.” , observing.

The announcement of the dissolution of parliament comes 30 years after former President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) staged a self-imposed coup on April 5, 1992. Pedro Castillo was chosen as the opponent of ‘Fujimorism’, but he eventually tried the same path.

“The populist is always populist, whether from the right or the left. It starts from a false premise: the division of society is Manichaean, the elite is corrupt, and they, the leaders, represent the people and can do whatever they want on behalf of the people,” translates Carlos Meléndez.

In his short one-and-a-half-year term, Pedro Castillo has ruled between five changes, with political crises, more than 60 ministerial changes in his cabinet, and three requests for impeachment.