Peruvian Elections and Politics: Boluarte era, political crisis continues

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The question now is: will Congress accept the cabinet, giving a stamp of approval to a cabinet further to the left than expected and a PM widely rejected by civil society? Or will they hand Castillo his first vote of no confidence and set him on the path to dissolving Congress and getting a new one?

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Congressional committee assignments came out a while ago. Right wing parties got all the major ones, Peru Libre got science and environment/Andean issues as well as some others. Castillo is pressuring the leadership to reconsider and at least give them the education committee.

In cabinet news, Bellido has been meeting with the various parties to try and get their OK and while it hasn’t gone particularly well, I’m not sure where we’re at with respect to a confidence vote - remember, a vote of no confidence is one step closer to new congressional elections.

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Confidence vote is scheduled for the 26th, with much of the opposition planning to abstain. Foreign minister Héctor Béjar (academic and former guerrilla fighter) just resigned over recently unearthed comments in which he claimed that Shining Path was created by the CIA and Peruvian navy.

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Any sort of point made using polls in Peru are based in faulty evidence given how hard it is to poll for rural indigenous highlanders.

Idk man, the runoff polls (for example) were all saying it was around 50-50 and it ended up basically 50-50. I don’t think there’s a bunch of secret Cerronistas hiding out in the mountains.

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New foreign minister is Óscar Maúrtua, who held the post for a year under Toledo - over Cerrón’s objections. Recent IEP poll shows that just over half of the population wants to see some change in the cabinet (no info on how much, though - could be Bellido, could be everyone but Francke) while 24% oppose the whole cabinet and 18% (the same percentage that Perú Libre got in the first round, mind you) fully support it.

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Acción Popular will vote in favor of the Bellido cabinet, but still wants Juan Carrasco (Interior minister, previously raised concerns over his taking a leave of absence from his prior job rather than directly resigning but I’m not aware of any other issues - I imagine the right wing of AP is salty about his past as an anti-corruption prosecutor), Walter Ayala (defense minister, questioned for a lack of experience in military issues), and Iber Maraví (labor minister, accused of having ties to MOVADEF) gone.

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Congress is debating the confidence vote now. Bellido opened by speaking in Quechua over the complaints of the far right, and I think abandoned Castillo’s pledge to expand rondas campesinas.

Session suspended until tomorrow.

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The confidence vote has passed. PL, JP, AP, and most of APP and Somos Peru* voted in favor. FP, RP, the PM*, and Alianza País (De Soto’s party, maybe the most economically right-wing group despite Castillo and De Soto’s aborted postelection overtures) voted against.

*Somos Peru and the Partido Morado are counted as one parliamentary group, since the morados only have three members and five are needed to form a group.

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This was a fun election. Following the slow trickle of results as Keiko's presidential hopes were once again dashed by the slimmest of margins got me through one of the most intense phases of my dissertation writing. I wish I could have taken part in the discussion here.

Sounds like Castillo is already proving to be a disappointment, which isn't exactly a surprise. Still, what matters most is to continue the Keiko Fujimori humiliation conga. That's basically the only purpose of Peruvian politics at this point.

In all seriousness, thank you Alfred for your excellent coverage of the situation there. That was really helpful.

Anything for you, Antonio. I know it’s not exactly the deepest dive on this board, but it does help me keep up with goings-on. I think you’ll be pleased to see that preliminary hearings for Keiko’s trial are underway.

In other news, Congressional Vice President Patricia Chirinos (Avanza País) has accused Bellido of making sexist comments towards her, saying she needs to get married and later to be raped. Alleged witnesses José Jerí of Somos Peru and Jaime Quito of Peru Libre confirm that there was a verbal altercation but disagree on whether the comments occurred, and Enrique Wong of Podemos Peru is reserving his version of the events for testimony before the congressional Ethics Committee. The right (FP, RP, Avanza País) has proposed a formal interpelation/questioning of Íber Maraví due to his alleged links with Movadef and Sendero figures; Bellido asked Maraví to resign and Maraví referred it to Castillo, who told him to stay.

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how long untill castro is removed from office???

I think once he really starts to try things they’ll get him out, although Boluarte is from the more radical wing of the party so they’d have to impeach her as well. Cerrón might support impeaching Castillo if he tacks too far to the center for him for precisely that reason; we’ve already seen him openly criticize moves or anticipated moves by Castillo on Twitter.

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Abimael Guzmán has died.

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Abimael Guzmán has died.

He will be cremated. A court has rejected his widow’s (Elena Iparraguirre aka Comrade Miriam, whom he married in prison ten years ago) and another high-ranking senderista’s requests to be able to dispose of the body, and it has been declared legally abandoned since he has no other living family.

In other news, justice minister and former leader of Castillo’s legal team Aníbal Torres openly criticized Vladimir Cerrón and the Perú Libre congressional caucus told him to shut up about it in a communique, although several members are known to sympathize with his position (those closest to Castillo, who were brought in from the teacher’s union and related activism).

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Guzmán’s remains have been cremated. In other news, there’s disputes over lifetime pensions for Presidents Vizcarra, Sagasti, and Merino, since they all became president through constitutional succession. The law apparently excludes members of Congress who ascend to the Casa de Pizarro from the right to a lifetime pension, which would leave Sagasti and Merino out of luck, but the last president to do so before then, Valentín Paniagua, was given the pension. Vizcarra would be eligible as a former Vice President who became president, but there are issues surrounding his having been impeached.

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There’s also been tension between Cerrón and the foreign ministry. The deputy foreign minister (Luis Enrique Chávez) said that “Peru’s position is that there are no legitimate authorities in Venezuela”, which Bellido immediately shot down (pointing out that Castillo met with Maduro at the recent CELAC summit), and the foreign minister (Maúrtua) has openly criticized Perú Libre’s proposed bill to allow the government to regulate or temporarily take over radio and TV stations, which has no support from the opposition and has even received criticism from some members of the caucus.

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Congressional interpelation of Maraví today. Although Castillo is apparently close to him and has stood with him, he’s refused to declare any impeachment/no confidence vote against Maraví to be a no confidence vote in the whole cabinet, which Bellido had proposed earlier.

Also, plans are moving forward with renegotiating the state’s contract with natural gas company Camisea, with Bellido and Cerrón floating the prospect of nationalization. Castillo has stayed focus on negotiating a better contract thus far.

Also, Castillo is apparently unsupportive of the Peru Libre media law, while the PL caucus has called for Maúrtua and the vice minister to resign.

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Leaked Whatsapp chats between various members of the Perú Libre caucus (including Bellido and Vladimir Cerrón’s brother Waldemar, the caucus spokesman) reveal coordinated attempts to force Maúrtua and Luis Enrique Chávez to resign, as well as attacks on moderate and former spokeswoman Betssy Chávez (ni relation). Castillo met yesterday evening with the caucus in two separate groups.

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Aníbal Torres confirms that Castillo will not make the censure vote against Maraví (which has enough votes to pass) into a confidence vote.

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MAJOR cabinet reshuffle.

Bellido is OUT and replaced by Mirtha Vásquez (former president of Congress during Sagasti’s administration, and notably a member of the FA and not Peru Libre). Maraví is also OUT and replaced by the moderate Betssy Chávez. Major shakeup within the government and a blow to the cerronista wing (although Luis Barranzuela, the new Interior minister, is a partner at the law firm defending Cerrón in his current corruption investigation).

Other major changes include the replacement of Juan Cadillo (education) with Carlos Gallardo, a member of FENATE (the teacher’s union Castillo founded as a spin-off from SUTEP), and of indigenous activist Cirilo Galvez (culture) with anti-Fujimori human rights lawyer Gisela Ortiz.

Castillo also vetoed a bill that would restrict the interpretation of the confidence clause of the constitution, meaning that Congress could only have a confidence vote in the cabinet over issues specific to the executive branch (i.e. the president couldn't make the approval of a bill or constitutional amendment into a confidence vote).

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Cérron gave too much leeway to that ungrateful Humala 2.0. He wouldn’t be where he is without the help of the Left.

Lmao, Mirtha Vásquez is not Humala. Cerrón was a massive weight on Castillo’s campaign and still is the biggest drain on his presidency.

Not everyone who's a member of a different leftist party - or even a more moderate member of the same leftist party! - as Your Guy is a fake leftist.

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Questions within Peru Libre about whether they'll vote for confidence in Vasquez. Edgar Tello, Jaime Quito, and Waldemar Cerrón, among others, will not. Guillermo Bermejo (one of the most controversial members of the caucus) and Kathy Ugarte, among others, will.

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Peru Libre caucus has stated that they plan to vote against confidence in the Vásquez cabinet - ironically the only party to do so thus far (although I don’t imagine RP and the fujimoristas buying Castillo’s new nice guy FF moves). Several individual members (Óscar Zea, Katy Ugarte) have said that they plan to vote for the cabinet, but it looks like Cerrón has close to officially split from Castillo.

(The main complaints appear to be Betssy Chávez and - interestingly enough - Dina Boluarte in the development ministry, even though she’s always been there and I’d been under the impression until recently that she was more of a party loyalist than Castillo.)

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Vásquez is meeting with the party caucuses this week. PL has said that they will not attend due to being in their provinces for constituency work.

Castillo has also reestablished relations with the Maduro government in Venezuela, accepting their ambassador and naming PL party spokesman Richard Rojas ambassador.

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Castillo has named former mayor of Lima from the 90s and current antivax wackjob (among other things) Ricardo Belmont as a presidential advisor. Very cool great job. Meanwhile about half of the Peru Libre caucus met with Vásquez yesterday, in defiance of Waldemar Cerrón’s order.

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Also, it’s Pedro Castillo’s birthday today! He turns 52.

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Further debate about the separation of powers. The legislature is trying to limit the scope of confidence votes to include only issues specifically related to the executive branch, but not constitutional reforms (i.e. Castillo’s project), which Aníbal Torres has promised to bring to the Constitutional Court for unconstitutionally limiting the executive’s power to hold confidence votes. Meanwhile, the executive wants to limit censures of ministers to only actions performed in their capacity as such (i.e. not Íber Maraví’s terrorism allegations) and essentially replace the “moral incapacity” standard for impeachment with a physical or mental incapacity standard to be judged by a group of doctors.