[News] Peru: Was it a Coup?

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resumen-english.org
<https://resumen-english.org/2022/12/peru-was-it-a-coup/>
Peru: Was it a Coup?

By Katu Arkonada December 9, 2022 in Tierra Adentro


When Professor Pedro Castillo won the presidential election against Keiko
Fujimori -in the second round and by a very narrow margin of 50.125%
against 49.875%, a difference of just over 40 thousand votes in a country
of 33 million inhabitants, he had two possible paths.

The first was to take to the streets the people of the regions historically
forgotten by the political, economic and media elites, as opposed to the
middle and upper classes of the capital Lima, which, with 35% of the
electoral roll, had traditionally defined the President of Peru. To take to
the streets a people that demanded a new Constitution to replace the one
promulgated by Fujimori in 1993. To convene a Constituent Assembly that,
faced with the power of a unicameral Parliament designed as a counterweight
to presidential power, would give rise to a power capable of generating the
necessary balance.

The other path, the other alternative, was to try to govern. And Pedro
Castillo, in what -now it is easy to say- was his first big mistake, chose
to govern.

The problem is that he had to govern in the court (a perverse institutional
system totally inclined and designed to the detriment of popular
interests), with the rules (Fujimori’s Constitution), and with the referee
against him (a Parliament with a Fujimori majority and a leftist minority).

Once Pedro Castillo chose to try to govern, an impeachment process was set
in motion, driven by Fujimorism with the coverage of the media oligopolies.
And obviously he could never govern with an ultra-fragmented Congress from
which he had to ask permission even to appoint ministers.

But Fujimorism had a weapon as perverse as it was powerful, Article 113 of
the Constitution, which establishes among the different causes for the
vacancy of the President (some are common sense, such as death or
resignation) the “permanent moral or physical incapacity, declared by the
Congress”.

The first motion of vacancy for permanent moral incapacity came in
November, only four months after having been in office, followed by a
second one in March 2022, and the third and last one, this December. To
illustrate the powerful arguments of the parliamentary opposition to Pedro
Castillo, one only has to read the 20 points of the second motion of
vacancy, where in addition to accusing Castillo of systematically lying, it
is stated that “he has not reflected, much less corrected his conduct; on
the contrary, he has insisted on defending his actions”. There are no more
words, your honor.

But if we take any definition in political science of coup d’état
(translation from French coup d’État), which is normally understood as a
usurpation (often violent) of the government of a country, and which we can
clearly visualize in what happened in 2019 in the neighboring country,
sister Bolivia, we could affirm that the only coup plotters were those who
tried to usurp from the legislative power the executive power through
motions of vacancy due to permanent moral incapacity.

It is not the purpose of this brief analysis to point out Pedro Castillo’s
mistakes: whether he managed the post pandemic and vaccination well or not,
whether he should have been tougher or more inflexible both with the caviar
left and with his (former) allies of Perú Libre, whether Aníbal Torres had
more or less power than he should have as President of the Council of
Ministers, even less if Pedro Castillo was wrong to isolate himself or to
look for the OAS as a salvation/legitimization table. Not even if there
were enough votes for the vacancy motion or if his actions in the last
hours of his term were clumsy, not to say suicidal.

None of the above justifies the parliamentary coup by Fujimorism and its
political, economic and media allies, before the complicit silence of the
international community, and the loneliness in which it was left by a good
part of the left that continues to seek revolutions in their classic 20th
century format, and does not understand (not to say despises) the popular
and the forms of representation, full of contradictions, that it finds to
dispute power.

Now it is the turn of Dina Boluarte, the sixth President in six years of a
country once ruled by Marshal Santa Cruz. Before her the dilemma is
repeated for the second time (and if the first one ended in tragedy with
the imprisonment of Pedro Castillo, let us hope this second one does not
end in farce): either she tries to govern and finish the mandate in 2026,
for which she will undoubtedly have to make a pact with the coup plotters,
which is a good part of her cabinet (and policies), or she brings forward
the elections to place again the Constituent Assembly on the horizon.

In the meantime, it is about time to change the question Vargas Llosa asks
in Conversation in the Cathedral “when did Peru get screwed”, for the
question of who screwed Peru. Peru was and continues to be screwed by the
political, economic and media coup plotters, with the complicity of some
sectors of the left, who do not respect the will of the social majorities.

Source: Tierra Adentro
<https://www.tierraadentro.cultura.gob.mx/peru-fue-golpe/>, translation
Resumen Latinoamericano – US
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