Dina Boluarte wants to fulfill her provisional mandate, which ends in 2026, but she is already listening to requests to advance the elections
Pedro Castillo could be tried for the crime of sedition, which includes penalties of 20 years in prison
The Peruvian political crisis does not seem to end with the dismissal of the president Pedro Castillo. Pressure from right-wing sectors for her replacement, Dina Boluarte, to abandon any claim to remain in government until 2026, as established by the Constitution, did not wait. She has begun to listen to the stealthy request to summon early elections.
Although the first head of state in Peruvian history called for “the broadest unity of all” and a “dialogue between all political forces”, no analyst dared to say how long her demand for a “truce” will be considered. . On her second day in charge of the Palacio Pizarro, she was forced to respond to recommendations to speed up the transition deadlines. “I know that There are some voices that indicate early elections and that democratically is respectable”, he said. However, he remarked: “Later on and in coordination with all the organizations we will be looking at alternatives to better reorient the destiny of the country.”
The idea of early elections hardly disturbs congressmen who do not want to lose their seats. But the Peruvian elite would lean towards another agenda. “The end of Castillo does not imply the end of the structural problems,” said the economic newspaper Management. The priority, he added, “must be to recover stability in 2023 and, with it, the path of economic growth.” In his editorial, he suggested to Boluarte and the opposition that “they would do well” to “seriously consider” not waiting until the current provisional government completes Castillo’s term.
According to the Lima newspaper The Republic“it is uncertain how long the truce will last“. Boluarte has something in common with his ousted predecessor: he lacks his own party and bench in a Parliament that, since 2018, has devoured four presidents: Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Martín Vizcarra, Manuel Merino and Castillo. That source weakness forces her to find support quickly. According to analyst Jeffrey Radzinsky, she should rely on regional governors. For now, the first proof of Boluarte’s solidity will be known shortly when he names the cabinet of ministers and, especially, his prime minister, who must have the approval of the legislature. Carlos Meléndez, columnist for Traderecommended that he not appoint a “progressive technocrat” but someone “who will allow him to connect with the representation of the popular world” to compensate for the asymmetry before a Congress “unscathed, discredited, the object of the wrath of an unequal country.”
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The provisional president must not only rebuild relations with the parties. One of her first gestures was to hand over to the prosecution all the documentation that she has found in the office that Castillo occupied. The ousted president spent his first night in the Diroes prison, where the ex-autocrat is serving his sentence Alberto Fujimoriwho on April 5, 1992 succeeded in the daring action that led Castillo to failure: the closure of Congress.
Castillo will remain at least a week as a prisoner of “el Chino”. He will later be put on trial for sedition. For this crime, penalties of up to 20 years in prison are contemplated. The Castillo coup was as ephemeral as it bordered on farce. Noticing that his ministers and the military left him alone, he decided to leave the Executive headquarters through its back door, in the company of his family. In a bag he carried the clothes with which he would enter the Mexico’s embassy. Its own president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, confirmed that they were waiting for him. Congress dismissed him while he was on his way to the diplomatic headquarters. He must have traveled that section as a common citizen. And it was then that members of his own custody received the order to arrest him.