Thousands of people took to the streets across Peru on Saturday to demand the resignation of embattled leftist President Pedro Castillo. That reports Reuters news agency. The President’s administration is currently under investigation for corruption.
The demonstrators marched to the government building in the capital Lima. Castillo called them “enemies of the people.” The demonstration never led to a major confrontation between the demonstrators and the police, but to disperse the crowd, the police deployed several tear gas canisters.
Castillo, who took office as president last July, has already survived two impeachment proceedings. The former elementary school teacher and union leader campaigned with the slogan “no more poverty in a rich country” and became especially popular outside of Lima and in the south and high in the Andes, where his left-wing nationalist anti-establishment message caught on. He promised that the population would benefit more from the profits from Peruvian mineral resources, mostly metals such as silver and gold.
Since then, its popularity has dropped significantly. Protests also took place in the South American country in April. Then thousands of people took to the streets to protest against rising inflation. Four people were killed in those protests.
“We see a government involved in corruption and Congress is not responding,” Lucas Ghersi, a lawyer and one of the organizers of the current protest, told Reuters news agency. Another protester said she was protesting for her children and grandchildren. “This government is hell.”