Peruvian Elections and Politics: Boluarte era, political crisis continues

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Ayala has taken back his resignation (over the apparent protests of Aníbal Torres and Hernando Cevallos). Congress will question him this Tuesday.

In other news, the Partido Morado and Somos Peru have ended their alliance/parliamentary cooperation due to political differences. Unclear to me why in particular.

Update: Ayala has fully resigned

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Castillo is commemorating today the anniversary of the deaths of Inti Sotelo and Bryan Pintado, the two young protesters whose deaths brought down the Merino government the next day. Their families are still seeking a retroactive impeachment of Merino, which would remove his presidential pension.

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Juan Carrasco Millones, former interior minister, is the new defense minister. The minister of production and agriculture (Roger Inicio, part of the Vásquez cabinet) has also resigned. Congress will interpelate education minister Carlos Gallardo, not for the prior criticism from the right of being too linked to Fenate (Castillo’s rival teachers’ union) but for the recent leaking of the questions and answers to the national teachers’ exam from three of the testing locations this weekend. Gallardo has refused to cancel the exam results and says he will participate in any investigation.

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Patricia Chirinos (Avanza País), second Vice President of Congress, has presented a motion to impeach Castillo, to almost no support (not even RP). The motion needs 26 signatures to be admitted (which it may get thanks to Avanza País + fujimorismo, which has not stated whether or not it’ll support it) and 52 at a later stage (unlikely) to be put up for debate, and from there it would need 87 to pass (essentially impossible at this stage).

If anyone’s curious about what the grounds for impeachment supposedly are, it’s that Castillo is performing presidential duties from an apartment rather than the presidential palace, and that he’s not being transparent about the visitors he receives.

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Bruno Pacheco (the advisor implicated in the army promotions scandal) has resigned.

In other news, Cerrón and Boluarte have been publicly fighting for the past several days. Boluarte said “Pedro and Dina were used by Cerrón” to benefit his party, while Cerrón accused Boluarte of plotting against Castillo.

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Fujimorismo and RP have signed onto the impeachment proposal. Still only 43 votes, not enough to  be put up for debate and less than half of the 87 needed to remove Castillo.

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Massive earthquake (7.3) in Amazonas department earlier today. Thousands of homes destroyed and only a few reported hurt thus far although that number should surely rise soon.

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I just read that apparently Castillo is now in hot water over his personal meetings with lobbyists at the worst possible time, given the impeachment bill.

Yes - and they’re one of the main subjects of the impeachment attempt itself (which is pretty catchall re: complaints about his administration). He’s been having tons of unregistered meetings in an apartment in Lima, trying to be the new José Mujica but just pissing a lot of people off.

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Maybe he should ask for help from more experienced politicians, like Cérron, instead of telling them to pipe down and ignoring their relevance in the party and their relevance to him being president in the first place.

It’s clear Castillo is way over his head, and he’s too haughty and stubborn to preserve his ego to even ask for professional help.

I’m sure Cerrón will be a great help with trying to defuse corruption allegations, but it’s an interesting turn you’ve made to siding with the fujimoristas.

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Maybe he should ask for help from more experienced politicians, like Cérron, instead of telling them to pipe down and ignoring their relevance in the party and their relevance to him being president in the first place.

It’s clear Castillo is way over his head, and he’s too haughty and stubborn to preserve his ego to even ask for professional help.

I’m sure Cerrón will be a great help with trying to defuse corruption allegations, but it’s an interesting turn you’ve made to siding with the fujimoristas.

I have not, and neither has Cérron given that Castillo is still in office. Cérron is being very patient with a dog that is misbehaving even with him giving the dog everything possible to succeed in life, and elevated in a miraculous first place in the recent beauty pageant. Even with all the public disrespect, PL is still one united party and in no way will threats turn to reality to give the possibility of Fujimoristas a chance.  

Why have you sided with the right wing media in sacking most of Castillo’s cabinet? Why have you bought into the politicized witch-hunt against Cérron in an atmosphere which weaponizes false corruption charges to target political opponents?

“PL is one united party”? Is this a joke? 19 voted for confidence in the Vásquez cabinet and 16 - Cerrón’s faction - voted against. If they’d succeeded the country would be one vote away from a new Congressional election that would likely give the right (if not fujimorismo itself) even more power. Waldemar Cerrón said that PL is “evaluating” supporting the right’s impeachment against Castillo just a few days ago. I opposed Bellido as prime minister because he was a virulent homophobe and I’m sorry you felt some sort of reflexive need to support him because he’s on your guy’s side (I certainly don’t feel that way with Castillo). I oppose him because he’s corrupt, unpopular, and a drag on the left. I don’t get why you’re so deeply invested in defending them or why you think Cerrón has a monopoly on the left.

Anyway, Castillo made a national address several days ago in which he claimed that the apartment meetings were “of a personal nature”, which is obviously not true. The impeachment is still unlikely to pass at this point but is gaining steam after widespread criticism of the speech. If the center and cerronismo join in they’ll have the votes to get him out - the 19 PL members who voted for Vásquez plus Castillo’s other allies (JP, PM, SP - and this is assuming they all vote against it) only makes 32, which is two less than the number needed to block an impeachment.

In better news, the health ministry recently announced that a million Covid booster shots have been applied thus far. The continued and orderly vaccination campaign has been one of the major bright spots of a chaotic administration.

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Maybe he should ask for help from more experienced politicians, like Cérron, instead of telling them to pipe down and ignoring their relevance in the party and their relevance to him being president in the first place.

It’s clear Castillo is way over his head, and he’s too haughty and stubborn to preserve his ego to even ask for professional help.

I’m sure Cerrón will be a great help with trying to defuse corruption allegations, but it’s an interesting turn you’ve made to siding with the fujimoristas.

I have not, and neither has Cérron given that Castillo is still in office. Cérron is being very patient with a dog that is misbehaving even with him giving the dog everything possible to succeed in life, and elevated in a miraculous first place in the recent beauty pageant. Even with all the public disrespect, PL is still one united party and in no way will threats turn to reality to give the possibility of Fujimoristas a chance. 

Why have you sided with the right wing media in sacking most of Castillo’s cabinet? Why have you bought into the politicized witch-hunt against Cérron in an atmosphere which weaponizes false corruption charges to target political opponents?

“PL is one united party”? Is this a joke? 19 voted for confidence in the Vásquez cabinet and 16 - Cerrón’s faction - voted against. If they’d succeeded the country would be one vote away from a new Congressional election that would likely give the right (if not fujimorismo itself) even more power. Waldemar Cerrón said that PL is “evaluating” supporting the right’s impeachment against Castillo just a few days ago. I opposed Bellido as prime minister because he was a virulent homophobe and I’m sorry you felt some sort of reflexive need to support him because he’s on your guy’s side. I oppose him because he’s corrupt, unpopular, and a drag on the left. I don’t get why you’re so deeply invested in defending them or why you think Cerrón has a monopoly on the left.

If PL wasn’t, it would have broken up already.

Cérron does not have a monopoly, but shutting him out has led to Castillo throwing out many more cabinet members due to a hyperactive smear campaign and has led him to make gaffes and misstep like him meeting with people at this apartment. It is unprofessional and harmful to the effectiveness of his government and entirely a self-own by sidelining all those with effective political experience in his party.

The apartment meetings have been going on since the beginning of his presidency - he literally announced that he wouldn’t be doing business in the Casa de Pizarro in his inaugural address! It wasn’t like Cerrón was the angel on his left shoulder telling him to not be good at things there that he just suddenly decided to stop listening to, while Anahí Durand or whoever was the devil. And it’s the most facile kind of political analysis to say “well, this party is still one party so it’s a United Party”. It’s been beset by infighting since God knows when. Acción Popular is more united than PL because at least they vote together consistently, but they obviously have factions as well (see Lescano vs. Maricarmen Alva).

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The cerronista faction of PL, which will be key to any potential impeachment vote, is planning to vote against this one - even Bellido, one of the most hardline members (and speculated by Katy Ugarte of the teachers’ faction to be a potential vote in favor) has announced that he is leaning against it. PL has over 1/4 of Congress, which is enough to block any impeachment attempt if they vote as one. If they don’t Castillo would need to rely on the left (JP - against) and center-left (PM - against as far as I can tell, kind of their thing at this point, and SP - split), which as discussed earlier also makes 1/4 when combined with the teachers’ faction, but which he is also struggling to keep ahold of.

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The impeachment attempt has failed on a motion to bring it up for debate in Congress. Only FP, RP, and Avanza País voted in favor, along with two members of APP and one from Podemos Perú. Castillo is weakened but not done.

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Well no s•••, why would Cérron break his own party and join the right.

I don’t know bud, why did he do it the last time?

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Susana Higuchi, ex-wife of Alberto Fujimori who divorced him during his presidency and later accused him of corruption, only to later become a victim of torture at the hands of his security forces, died two days ago of cancer.

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Growing scandal around Maricarmen Alva’s visit to Spain, where she met with Vox and trashed Castillo as “illegitimate” and the government as “captured by communism”. But not enough for a censure vote to gain any traction: Guillermo Bermejo presented a censure motion but it failed by a wide margin, with half of the PL caucus (including leading cerronistas like Bellido and Waldemar Cerrón as well as leading magisterialistas like Edgar Tello and Alex Paredes). Bermejo has resigned from the party as a result.

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Hamlet Echeverría and labor minister Betssy Chávez (both of the magisterialistas) have quit the PL along with Bermejo. Luis Kamiche (magisterialista) is openly considering it. The censure motion only received 15 votes from PL and five from JP (16 from PL abstained and the other six presumably didn’t vote).

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https://mobile.twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1473080736618102787

Seems like the JPP continues to break apart, with 4/7 parties in the alliance exiting and either joining the purple party, joining PL, and whatever may this party do next.

JPP has always been essentially Nuevo Perú plus Yehude Simón’s party (former premier under Alan García, under whose watch the Baguazo occurred) with a few extras tacked on.

Also Castillo is being investigated due to his ties with corrupt businesswoman Karelim Lopez (one of the main people implicated in the apartment meetings) and advisor Bruno Pacheco. Meanwhile, education minister Gallardo has been formally censured due to the test results leak and his ties with Fenate (Castillo’s newer teachers union, rival to traditional union Sutep which Castillo led during the 2017 teachers’ strike that first brought him to prominence).

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Ah, but they're just antizionist, you see.

No, this is serious and in no need of sarcasm. These are blatant statements of antisemitic content that should be held to scrutiny so as to improve Peru. Same goes for the LGBTQ issue, where different collectives and personalities more radical and outside PL critiqued their position and caused them to change their minds through grassroots osmosis.

See also: the massive pressure from feminist organizations to not make Roger Najar PM, which seemed to work out at the last minute (although we’ll see how well that works re: the outcome of the Jaime Quito investigation).

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Veep expelled

Oh no! Anyway,

(There actually are a few anyways - Congress has proposed a law to ban referenda on constitutional reform issues without congressional approval, which Castillo has promised to bring to the TC; an apparently uncomfortable interview with Castillo by Fernando del Rincón to come out tonight; and of course the aftereffects of the Tonga volcano, which has seen the government accuse refinery company Repsol of not implementing proper safety procedures, leading to an oil spill in the Pacific as a result of the eruption and tsunami.)

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🦀 🦀🦀 Vazquez is out 🦀🦀🦀

Love to kick out Avelino Guillén to own the libs. I’m sure you’ll love her replacement, former APRA/Renovación Popular/Somos Perú member (in that order, somehow*) Héctor Valer.

*a word which here means “elected in RP, then quit during the second round and supported Castillo, then joined Somos Perú and left earlier this year to form his own minor party, which I just noticed is the one you posted about earlier.”

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Re: the rest of the cabinet, major/interesting names appear to be that Cevallos is staying, Francke is leagint (replaced by functionary Óscar Graham Yamahuchi, at least for now), Alfonso Chávarry in Interior (colonel and apparent Barranzuela ally who’d been favored by Castillo against Vásquez’s wishes to nominate a civilian), former constitutional court president Cesar Landa in foreign relations.

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Oh and just for flavor, the new women’s minister (PL congresswoman Katy Ugarte) said that “we were born male and female, we don’t have to distort that” in an interview last year. But I guess that’s just the price you pay for not being a Fake Leftist.

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Valer is already in trouble after a domestic violence complaint from his (now deceased) wife from 2016 resurfaced. Castillo is supposed to speak about the issue later today, and there are already marches planned. JP looks like they’ll oppose confidence in Valer.

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Castillo gave a speech saying that he’ll be “restructuring the cabinet”. El País has reported that Valer is out but no one else is confirming it. Either way there have already been significant protests against Valer and any confidence vote looks essentially dead.