The Congress of Peru intensifies its offensive against President Pedro Castillo, who has remained without a party

A constitutional accusation advanced in Congress, a new minister censored and a sudden break with the party that brought him to power. This is the balance of a week left by the Peruvian President Pedro Castillo, with less oxygen to survive to the increasingly suffocating opposition machine.

Legislative friction a management that was known from the beginning to be weak and that made numerous mistakes in just under a year it reached its peak last Thursday, when the initiatives that had been preparing for days took shape in Congress.

That day the Supervisory Commission approved, with a vote as fast as it was chaotic, a report accusing Castillo of directing an alleged criminal network rooted in the executivein which other characters related to its management, fugitives from justice, were also involved.

The dossier, which proposes to constitutionally accuse the head of state for the crimes of criminal organization, incompatible negotiation and improper use of the position, will be voted on in the next few days by the entire Legislature and, with the favorable votes of the opposition, Everything indicates that it will receive the green light.

Among its more than 360 pages, the report suggests referring it to the Public Prosecutor, who has already opened an investigation against Castillo, and also to the Subcommittee for the constitutional accusations of the Parliament, who has another impeachment complaint in his hands against the vice president, Dina Boluarte.

If we add the case of Castillo, the subcommittee could propose his disqualification for constitutional infringement, in addition to that of Boluarte, who, in plenary, would require only 66 votesa horizon that is perceived to be increasingly feasible and which could lead to the end of the current administration.

record of censorship

Exactly on the same day, and at the same time as this report was discussed in the Review Commission, Congress has censored the interior ministerDimitri Senmache, just over a month after taking on this portfolio, which already has six different holders in the eleven months of management of Castillo.

A scenario that, for a large sector of the population, confirms the inability of the president to elect fit officials amid his wavering from scandal to scandal, which saw him appoint four ministry cabinets in less than a year.

Others point to the hostile role of a Conservative-majority Congress and with particular political interests, this already adds two failed attempts to remove Castillo from power, while discreetly trying to change the Constitution.

Probably, it is the mixture of all these ingredients that keeps Peru mired in that perennial political and moral crisis that has dragged on over the last five years (2016-2021), which led the country to one of its biggest political crises in democracy and which ended with the fall of three presidents, the dissolution of Parliament and the failure of citizens and the political class.

Senmache’s complaint was justified, among other claims, for his alleged responsibility in the escape of former Transport Minister Juan Silva, Wanted by justice for his alleged participation in the alleged network of corruption in the current executive.

With this release, promoted by the Fujimori Popular Force party, the current legislature He already has four ministers removed in less than a yearthus surpassing the number of censored officials over the past two decades.

more alone than ever

In favor of the censorship of the Minister of the Interior eleven members of Peru Libre, the Marxist party that brought Castillo to power, voted in July of last year and from which the president officially left the same Thursday, at the request of this political organization led by Vladimir Cerrón convicted of corruption.

Party leaders asked the government resign irrevocably to his militancy after accusing him of implementing a “losing neoliberal program” and of promoting the internal fracture of his seat, which in the 2021 elections was the most voted with 37 deputies, of which only 16 remain today.

A checkmate that crowned the distance felt for months between Castillo and Peru Libre, and that dexpelled the head of state without a formal official caucus e more bridges to dialogue with a Parliament strongly disapproved of by citizens (85%), which also refuses, for 71%, the management of the president.

Today the ruling party loyal to the president has been reduced to four groups that have separated from the Peru Libre: the Magisterial Bank, the Peru Democrático, the Bicentennial Peru and the Cambio Democrático, which in total they add 27 seats out of the 130 that the Peruvian hemicycle has.

Numbers that not only shake Castillo’s shield in Congress, but also postpone Peru’s desire to establish a governance that leads it on the democratic path and balance of power, weakened by political incompetence and private agendas outside the public interest .

EFE agency

PB