The Peruvian Attorney General, Patricia Benavides asked the Peruvian Congress to lift the presidential immunity of Pedro Castillo just 14 months after he took office, paving the way for his criminal prosecution and possible removal from office. The filing of the complaint on Tuesday of last week came just hours after the arrests of three of Castillo’s advisers, and three business executives accused of secretly financing his campaign last year.
does not stand
Castillo, a political outsider turned president, described as a left populist, has already survived an impeachment vote in May, when lawmakers failed to muster the required two-thirds majority. But now Congress could move into a constitutional gray area, letting the lawsuit play out in a variety of ways, and suspend Castillo from his job or remove him altogether with a simple majority. And in his unrelenting political crisis, it is possible that Peru goes for a world record by bringing another president to justice, and with the passage of five presidents in 7 years.
Until now, however, Peru had upheld a democratic norm that could trigger: that sitting leaders cannot be prosecuted. And it is that the short and chaotic mandate of Castillo has been dominated by accusations of bribery and incompetence. Since he took office in July 2021, he has burned through his political capital: his approval rating has dropped below 20%.
Former rural teacher and leader of the strikes in the north of the country, he ran as a candidate for the Marxist-Leninist Free Peru party, and has based his entire political identity on his humble origins and his supposed affinity with the poor. But his critics assure that he has betrayed the most marginal sectors of Peru that suffer from hunger due to the economic crisis.
Half of the 33 million inhabitants of Peru experience food insecuritydouble the pre-pandemic level, and is expected to continue to rise due to higher prices for fertilizers that were normally imported from Ukraine and Russia. Castle’s response has been to insist that the Incas got by without modern fertilizers, and that only the “lazy” will suffer.
Background
Alberto Fujimori serving a long prison sentence in Peru for directing death squads (sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes against humanity); Alexander Toledo fights extradition from the United States to respond to accusations of receiving bribes; Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine Heredia were arrested and imprisoned for having received illegal money for their election campaign; and two more hope their corruption cases will be heard (Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Martin Vizcarra). Also, Allan Garcia he shot himself in 2019, when police entered his home to arrest him on bribery charges.
Now it’s Castillo’s turn. Prosecutor Benavides announced the constitutional lawsuit almost on national television, flanked by a dozen other officials involved in the investigation, including Harvey Colchado, the police colonel whom Castillo has tried to fire. Benavides assured that his team had discovered a “criminal organization embedded in the government with the purpose of capturing, controlling and directing the hiring processes at different levels of the state to make illicit profit”.
Castillo responded with a press conference exclusively for foreign media (Peruvian journalists were blocked), accusing his opponents of launching a “coup.” Article 117 of the Constitution of Peru, invoked by prosecutor Benavides, allows constitutional charges against presidents for committing treason, interfering in elections or illegally dissolving Congress. That is what Benavides appealed to in the case of Castillo, instead of citing article 113, which allows the impeachment of a president for “moral incapacity”and which has already been used in recent years to force two presidents out of office.
scenarios
Peruvian jurists who oppose the process point out that what is proposed by the attorney general is a reinterpretation of article 117. Those who endorse it agree with the idea, but point out that it is the best vehicle to fill the gap in case law: Article 113 requires a two-thirds qualified majority in Congress, but Article 117 requires only a simple majority to remove Castillo from office. “You cannot have a president who heads a criminal organization and allow him to complete his mandate,” said Luciano López, a professor at the Catholic University of Peru, and one of the academics who proposed approving the limits cited in Article 117.
But Alexandra Ames, a political scientist at the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima, warned that expelling him using an unproven and perhaps illegitimate mechanism could open the door to a worse scenario. The majority of Congress is ultraconservative and hostile to Castillo. But with many lawmakers keen to serve out their terms, which end in 2026, it is unclear whether they will risk the possibility of snap elections.
Many political analysts point out that firing the president without holding legislative elections would be unfeasible and could provoke massive protests. Congress, enduring its own endless stream of ethics and corruption scandals, is even less popular than Castillo, with an approval of about 13%.
The most notorious example is that of deputy Freddy Díaz, accused of raping an assistant: the chamber suspended Díaz for drinking alcohol on legislative premises, but refused to address the rape charge, an absolute embarrassment that shows the corporatism that could save Castillo. But Benavides could appeal in such a case to Peru’s constitutional court: a court that also has a conservative majority, so it is considered unlikely that it will rule in favor of Castillo, who sooner or later should leave Pizarro’s chair.
