Demonstrators clash with police during anti-government protests on Saturday in Lima / AFP
LIME
Peru is trapped in a marked deterioration of its political class, unable to provide answers and connect with a fractured country that has seen more than 50 people die in direct confrontations since December 7, according to experts.
Although the rejected proposal to advance the general elections for this year still has a chance with the reconsideration that will be presented today in Congress, some political scientists are skeptical that progress will be achieved.
“This is a toxic Congress: it is rejected by 88 percent of the population, according to surveys; it is branded by (the civil association) Proética as the most corrupt institution, it is the most discredited Legislature in the region in the Latinobarómetro”, recalled Alonso Cárdenas, from the London School of Economics.
“Congress, like almost the entire political class in Peru, lives with its back to the country, it doesn’t understand it,” added Roger Santa Cruz, from the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya Jesuit University in Lima.
In the early hours of Saturday, after more than seven hours of debate with reproaches, Parliament rejected the proposal of Hernando Guerra García, of the Fuerza Popular party (FP), so that the elections would no longer take place in April 2024, as expected, but in October of this year, so that the president and parliamentarians leave next December.
The proposal by Guerra García, who his adversaries say was following orders from the FP leader, Keiko Fujimori, was also a response to President Dina Boluarte, who urged on Friday to anticipate the elections to get out of the “quagmire”.
According to Santa Cruz, the doubts of the rivals to Fujimorismo are reasonable: “Popular Force has bases throughout the country. It has more capacity for a short campaign. His is political calculation, ”he pointed out.
The Renovación Popular and Avanza País parties, which share the space furthest to the right with Fujimorismo in the ideological spectrum of Congress, separated from their ally and swept away Guerra García’s project.
“The alliance that supports Boluarte is cracking,” warned Cárdenas.
The current president was elected vice president by the leftist Peru Libre party, but since she succeeded the ousted Pedro Castillo on December 7, her support has been based on the conservative benches.
The left also has its share of responsibility in this lack of political agreement to get out of the crisis, because it conditions its vote to the early elections to a referendum for a Constituent Assembly, a possibility rejected by broad sectors of power.
“The left knows that its proposal will never have support from the right,” said Cárdenas, for whom the issue is used as a pretext to negotiate minor benefits.
“MEDIOCRE” REASONS
“They are quite mediocre reasons (on both sides). Not ideological, nor of the country’s model, but to hold on to the charges for a few more months, ”he added.
The experts also highlighted among the weaknesses of the current Congress, the fact that it is divided into more than ten political forces, in addition to independent congressmen, without strong leadership or personalities that generate consensus.
For this reason, according to Cárdenas and Santa Cruz, the eventual resignation of Boluarte would not necessarily alleviate tensions because figures of “democratic personalities, linked to human rights, consultants, with experience” have not emerged, as was the case after the departure of Alberto Fujimori (1990 -2000) Valentín Paniagua or Francisco Sagasti in 2020 after the fall of the government of Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020).
Peru has had six presidents since 2018, from the right, from the center, from the left. A fire to which the political class contributes more fire than water and in which Congress seems to limit its function to fighting with the Executive.
It all started in 2016 with President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who despite being right-wing, was targeted by the Fujimori bench until 2018, when he managed to remove him for having defeated their leader, Keiko Fujimori.
His replacement, Martín Vizcarra, suffered the same fate, and his successor imposed by Congress, Manuel Merino, was ousted in 2020 by a five-day riot in the streets of Lima.
The story continued with Castillo, who waged a war against Congress that ended with his dismissal, also produced after he tried to close the Legislative and govern by decree. That’s where the story of Boluarte began.
In the midst of the current upheaval, tougher in the relegated southern Andes, there is no guarantee that better authorities will emerge from the elections in 2023 or 2024, both political scientists concluded. “The political solution is in a political reform, but these politicians have to do that reform,” Cárdenas ironized.
