Dina Boluarte’s message for Christmas, in the midst of the crisis in Peru: “We cannot generate chaos when there are political interests behind it”

In the midst of the crisis in which Peru has been submerged in recent days, the president Dina Bolarte He gave a Christmas message in which he asked the entire population to put aside violent protests and “not generate chaos when there are political interests behind it”.

“It’s not easy for me to say Merry Christmas to each of you.. I would have liked to start this transitional government without that violence and without those human losses that hurt my heart. I renew my condolences to the families”, the president began in her 10-minute message broadcast on the Peruvian afternoon of 24 December.

In this sense, Boluarte has asked the demonstrators not to continue with the seizure of airports or the burning of institutions such as the judiciary or the prosecutor’s office. “What does it solve? In the face of health, education, water and agriculture needs. What does it solve? Brothers and sisters. This solves nothing,” she said.

“The only thing I want in my capacity as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter, as a sister, is to work serenely to resolve what you, with just reason, demand, but that is precisely why you are doing not to take advantage of them and use them to generate violence in the country,” he added.

“How can we work in the midst of violence? We cannot generate chaos, disorder, when there are political interests behind it. Poverty, needs have no ideology, needs, hunger, have no political color,” he said.

In this regard, he asked to work “together for the country without violence, without creating chaos”. “There, whoever wants to generate chaos and violence, unmask yourself because it is not you, sisters and brothers, who go out in peaceful marches to justly reclaim what the state owes them”, exclaimed the president who was sworn in on December 7, after that Pedro Castillo was fired.

Finally, Boluarte insisted in his message on the need to work quietly for the country with “peace, calm and legal security” to attract investments and meet needs until the end of his mandate.

In the midst of a momentary decline in the intensity of popular protest, a Peru mourning the deaths of 27 people is preparing to close a year full of difficulties and give way to another equally uncertain.

“In democratic terms we won’t see a better situation, but without a doubt (President Dina Boluarte) can be supported for a while yet,” predicted leftist former MP Indira Huilca, on alternative channel La Mula TV. But she will do it, added Huilca, “with the same strategy: with repression and persecution.”

In Peru of uncertainty, the next appointment at the polls is scheduled for April 2024. In other words, 2023 will be a pre-electoral year, despite the fact that an Executive and a Legislative had emerged from the 2021 elections, which under normal conditions should last until 2026.

If the schedule is met – they have yet to be confirmed in a second parliamentary vote – Peru would have a new president and a new Congress in July 2024, a year and a half which in current circumstances feels like a century.

According to a survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), 71% of residents disagree that Boluarte has hired the head of state to replace the dismissed Pedro Castillo, of which he was vice president.

For the director of the IEP, Patricia Zárate, this refusal derives from the discrediting of Congress, since the arrival of Boluarte was seen as a move to remove the specter of early elections as much as possible.

If the current president had refused to take the lead, the position should have been filled by the president of Congress, José Williams, who would have been required by law to call an election immediately.

Everything got worse when Boluarte initially said he was here to stay until 2026, in coexistence with the legislature under discussion. When he moved away from that position, the country was already in flames.

The repression has worsened the image. Boluarte, elected vice president in a leftist formula and said to identify with that thought, began to be seen by many as an expression of that right that fiercely opposed Castillo.