[News] The Coup That is Taking Place in Peru

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/06/15/the-coup-that-is-taking-place-in-peru/
The
Coup That is Taking Place in Peru
by José Carlos Llerena Robles – Vijay Prashad
<https://www.counterpunch.org/author/jscrllrn20021/>- June 15, 2021
------------------------------

Keiko Fujimori and Fernand Rospigliosi.

Pedro Castillo of the Perú Libre party has already begun to receive
congratulations from around the world. It is beyond doubt that he won the
June 6 presidential election. The Peruvian Electoral Authority – ONPE –
announced
<https://www.resultadossep.eleccionesgenerales2021.pe/SEP2021/EleccionesPresidenciales/RePres/T>
the final results: Castillo won 50.137% of the vote (8.83 million votes),
while his opponent in the second round Keiko Fujimori of Fuerza Popular won
49.893% (8.78 million votes). This is with 100% of the votes. By all
accounts, Fujimori has lost the election.

However, Fujimori – the candidate of the right – has refused to concede. In
fact, she has hired the very best of Peru’s legal minds to challenge the
election results. Within hours of the election tallies being available,
Fujimori’s team filed
<https://gestion.pe/peru/politica/keiko-fujimori-fuerza-popular-presento-recursos-de-nulidad-para-802-actas-nndc-noticia/>
134 challenges within the window of opportunity; they have another 811
challenges in hand. Anyone who knows the Peruvian legal fraternity will
realize that some of the most important names
<https://peru.as.com/peru/2021/06/10/actualidad/1623333910_757038.html> are
on the Fujimori roster: Echecopar; Gersi; Miranda & Amado; Payet, Rey,
Cauvi, Pérez; Rodrigo, Elías & Medrano; Rubio Leguía Normand; Rebaza,
Alcázar & De las Casas. In Lima alone the team had over thirty lawyers at
work. The Fujimori team had assembled
<https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2021/06/07/fuerza-popular-abogados-elecciones-impugnacion-de-actas-estudios-juridicos/redaccionmulera/>these
lawyers before the vote, anticipating the possibility of a Castillo victory
and the need to tie him up in the courts. The white collar legal army put
in place a racist lawfare strategy; their entire game has been to
invalidate the votes that are at the core of Castillo’s support base,
namely the indigeous communities of Peru.

The United States appointed a new ambassador to Peru. Her name is Lisa
Kenna, a former advisor to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a nine-year
veteran at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a US Secretary of
State official in Iraq. Just before the election, Ambassador Kenna released
a video, in which she spoke of the close ties between the US and Peru and
of the need for a peaceful transition from one president to another. The
“presidential transition sets an example for the whole region,” she said
<https://twitter.com/USEMBASSYPERU/status/1380926581812703235>, as if
anticipating a serious challenge. If anyone would know about interference
in the electoral process in Latin America, it would be the United States.

It would also be key members inside the team of Keiko Fujimori, such as
Fernando Rospigliosi. Rospigliosi, a former interior minister under
President Alejandro Toledo, joined
<https://elcomercio.pe/politica/elecciones/fernando-rospigliosi-las-veces-que-cuestiono-el-papel-de-fuerza-popular-en-anteriores-campanas-noticia/>
the Fujimori team for just this kind of contest (for years, Rospigliosi had
been very critical <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VekMY3mXkCI> of the
crimes committed by Fujimori’s father, President Alberto Fujimori, who is
now serving a prison sentence). Working with the US embassy is on the
resume of Rospigliosi. In 2005, the former left-leaning military officer
Ollanta Humala was set to enter the presidential race in April 2006. Every
indication suggested that Humala, who had attempted a coup against Keiko
Fujimori’s father President Alberto Fujimori in 2000, has mass support.
Some even thought that Humala would follow both Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales
to draw Peru leftwards. In that period, Rospigliosi went to the US embassy
to seek support in preventing a Humala victory in 2006.

On 18 November 2005, Rospigliosi and ex-Director of National Defence Ruben
Vargas came for lunch <https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05LIMA5061_a.html>
to the embassy. They offered their “concern over prospects that
ultranationalist Ollanta Humala is establishing himself as a political
force to be reckoned with.” Rospigliosi and Vargos both worked for an NGO
<http://chs-peru.com/> called Capital Humano y Social (CHS), which was
under contract with the US government’s Law Enforcement and Narcotics
Affairs Section (NAS). Both Rospigliosi and Vargas asked the US embassy to
urge their communications contractor Nexum to “monitor coverage of Humala
and promote anti-Humala news and commentary in the coca regions.” They
wanted the US embassy to use its considerable resources to undermine
Humala. This is old fashioned dirty tricks.

The US was worried about Humala, about his statements
<https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06LIMA951_a.html> against the US
military presence in Peru and his ties
<https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/05LIMA4271_a.html> to Hugo
Chávez. What Rospigliosi and Vargas said to the US embassy pleased them.
Humala lost the election in 2006. He would win in 2011, beating Keiko
Fujimori; but by 2011, Humala had estalished himself as a candidate of the
neoliberals, someone that the US saw as harmless and useful. On 19 May
2011, Humala signed a text that yoked him to the neoliberal agenda
(“Compromiso en Defensa de la Democracia”). At the gathering, he was blessed
<https://elcomercio.pe/politica/gobierno/mario-vargas-llosa-reitero-su-respaldo-ollanta-humala-traves-video-noticia-759984/>
by Peru’s right-wing godfather, the novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.

Vargas Llosa is a key figure here, using the prestige of his 2010 Nobel
Prize for literature as weight. As results came in that Pedro Castillo has
swept rural Peru, Vargas Llosa disparaged voters in the rural areas; he
warned
<https://www.pagina12.com.ar/348153-elecciones-en-peru-mario-vargas-llosa-y-su-esfuerzo-por-demo>
that Peru would become like Venezuela and that it would a catastrophe for
Peru. Marinated in the bile of racism, Vargas Llosa joined other
intellectuals of the extreme right to belittle the Peruvian working-class
and peasantry, hoping that such remarks would give sufficient cover to the
coup process underway inside the ONPE.

Everything seems prepared: the US ambassador with CIA credentials, a dirty
tricks man with a habit of going to the embassy for help and with a record
of asking the US to malign the left, a grand old man with an allergy to his
own people, and a candidate whose father was backed by the oligarchy when
he conducted a self-coup in 1992.

Pedro Castillo continues to hold the streets. The crowds will gather. They
do not want their election to be stolen. But there is fear in Peru. Darker
forces swirl about. Will the people be able to defeat them?

*José Carlos Llerena Robles is a popular educator, member of the Peruvian
organization, La Junta and representative of Alba Movimientos Peruvian
Chapter.* *Vijay Prashad is Chief Correspondent at Globetrotter, Director
of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, and Chief Editor at
LeftWord Books. His most recent book is Washington Bullets
<https://monthlyreview.org/product/washington-bullets/>, with a foreword by
Evo Morales Ayma.*
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