Political crisis in Peru
- Latam Sin Filtro
- Dec 6, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 2
March 2023
In November 2022, Pedro Castillo, President of Peru (until December 7, 2022), tried to prevent his impeachment process by dissolving Congress. His decision plunged the country into a deep political crisis and the Peruvian Parliament approved a motion of censure to expel him from office, accusing him of attempting a coup against the government. Vice President Dina Boluarte took power after Castillo's ouster and became Peru's first female president.
Today, violent demonstrations against the new government of Dina Boluarte are ravaging the country, many Peruvians are against the new president. Between November 2022 and March 2023, protests left 54 people dead (according to the latest official UN data consulted in March 2023) due to government police repression and violence by some protesters. A large part of the population is calling for new early presidential elections, the resignation of Dina Boluarte and the dissolution of Parliament. More radical demonstrators are calling for the organization of a Constituent Assembly, in fact, by March 2023, about 40% of Peruvians want a new constitution to be drafted.
Context (2017-2023): Peru's political instability
Preamble of the Peruvian social crisis
In 2017, President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned from office before being impeached by Congress, which was experienced by Peruvians as a coup. Faced with this, thousands of young people took to the streets to protest this act that they consider authoritarian. This is how "el estallido social", the social crisis, began in Peru.
Credit: Representación Permanente del Perú - OEA
2021 Presidential elections
The protests have continued throughout the pandemic and have even intensified. They ended with the 2021 presidential elections. Nearly 20 candidates ran in the first round without any of them obtaining a relevant percentage of the votes. Indeed, the winner of the first round, Pedro Castillo, a left-wing candidate, only obtained 16.1% of the votes. He is a peasant teacher and trade unionist so little known that he didn't even have a picture for his presidential campaign. The latter won the elections by catalyzing a real anger against the Peruvian elites. When he ran for president, he promised, among other things, to amend the 1993 Political Constitution. He wanted the State to participate more in the Peruvian economy and promised an "educational revolution" to improve access to and quality of public education.
First of all, Pedro Castillo was able to win these elections because of a general weariness of Peruvians with right-wing politics, corruption and a strong anti-fujimorist sentiment in the country. He was able to take advantage of the overabundance of candidates (more than 20) and the extreme fragmentation of the vote to gain power. Castillo was able to take advantage of the weaknesses of the Peruvian political system.
December 2022: when Castillo became the trigger of new protests
Faced with a politically divided Congress, Pedro Castillo found himself unable to govern and was also accused of corruption. Congress has launched a lawsuit for "vacancia moral" three times, which can be compared to the impeachment in the United States as it involves the dismissal of the president. The procedure was accepted after Castillo tried to dissolve Congress on December 7, 2022, an act that was considered to be a real coup attempt. In a message to the nation, he ordered the dissolution of Parliament and the intervention of other institutions, including the Constitutional Court and the judiciary. It is highly likely that Castillo tried to dissolve Congress in order to avoid being removed from office. Castillo was arrested the same day on his way to the Mexican embassy in Lima, hoping to find refuge.
On the same day, Dina Boluarte became the first female president of Peru.
Political instability: Structural problems
List of presidents of Peru since the democratic transition (1990–2023)
In 23 years, from 2000 (democratic transition) to 2023, there have been 11 Peruvian presidents. This figure is quite high considering that the presidential term in Peru is 5 years. Normally, 4 Peruvian presidents should have governed Peru. Most of them were not elected but were vice presidents or presidents of Congress who came to power after the impeachment proceedings of presidents. Between 2000 and 2023, only 6 presidents out of the 11 were elected.
More recently, in 2018, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski resigned a few days before being subject to impeachment proceedings by Congress. He was replaced by his vice president, Martín Vizcarra, who dissolved Congress in September 2019 and then impeached by Congress in November 2019 accusing him of corruption.
In January 2020, Congress appointed Manuel Merino, who was then president of Congress. Merino had to resign due to public opposition, so another congressman, Francisco Sagasti, was appointed and remained in power until the presidential elections of July 2021.
Atomization of Peruvian political forces
There are many political parties in Peru. For example, 10 different parties have seats in Congress, making decision-making difficult within this institution and also demonstrating the division (the "atomization") of Peruvian political forces. There are many parties, and there is no real representation of the population, the parties have no real strength, they are small parties. All the traditional parties in Peru have disappeared over time (especially with the coming to power of Fujimori).
Moreover, these parties are fragile, with members having little loyalty to their own party. It is common for their members to change, turn their backs and seize opportunities, even if it means contradicting themselves or entirely changing sides. Typically, many members of Congress run under a party with the sole intention of coming to power and in the next election, they switch parties. You may see a congressman ally with a left-wing candidate for the one-year presidency and then see him ally with another right-wing candidate in the next election.
As for the powers of the Peruvian president, no head of state has had a majority in Congress for many years, paralyzing the country's politics and preventing any president from reforming the country. There is a real confrontation between Congress (the legislative branch) and the president, (the executive branch). This confrontation is reflected in the excessive use of tools such as the dissolution of Congress and the impeachment of the president, which are tools provided for in the Peruvian Constitution. In addition, the direct re-election of a president is forbidden. The president of Peru is often called a “lame duck" (in politics, a lame duck refers to an elected official whose term of office is coming to an end but still in office, while his successor is already elected but does not yet hold the position). The lame duck president in Peru is therefore unable to implement long-term measures because he is taking over the position of a deposed elected official and knows that he will remain shortly before his replacement comes to power.
CorrupTIOn
All Peruvian presidents from Fujimori to Pedro Castillo (with the exception of Paniagua and Sagasti), have been accused of serious corruption cases and several of them have been convicted. But corruption is also widespread on a smaller scale. 22 of Peru's 25 state governors are under investigation for corruption. In Peru, there is a lack of political representatives who can respond to citizens' demands and the country does not have a transparent political system. Politicians are incapable of going beyond their personal interests.
If the two previous attempts to impeach Castillo failed, it was not so much because the president had a solid parliamentary majority, but rather because his impeachment would mean calling early elections and the risk for the deputies, who cannot be re-elected, of losing their seats and, consequently, their power.
Political polarization (Fujimorism versus anti-Fujimorism and right versus left) and the atomization of parties have made the country ungovernable.
Situation of the demonstrations (marzo de 2023)
Protesters try to keep up with the pace of the movement that began when Boluarte, who was then vice president, was sworn in to replace Castillo after promising a year earlier at an event in the south of the country that, if the president was impeached, she would resign from office because her loyalty is "unwreckable."
Dina Boluarte said that the anti-government protesters do not have a social agenda, and she accused them of wanting to "break the rule of law" and generate "chaos and disorder" in order to "take power from the nation". The latter declared a state of emergency in December 2022.
"Their protests are not based on a social agenda that this country needs (...) You want to break the rule of law, you want to generate chaos and disorder in order to take power from the nation" - Dina Boluarte
To deal with the protesters, the Peruvian government deployed more than 11,000 officers from the Peruvian National Police (PNP). Officially, according to UN figures in March 2023, there have been 54 deaths, 1301 injured people and hundreds of arrests. In one of its reports, Amnesty International accused the Peruvian government of failing to respect human rights in the context of the violent repression of protests. The non-governmental organization claims that the government acted out of racism and targeted populations historically discriminated against. Protesters chanted "Dina murderer" in the streets, directly blaming the president for the deaths of the protesters.
So far, neither of the two biggest demands of the protesters have been met and although Boluarte has tried to get Congress to bring forward the elections, no agreement has been reached to satisfy the citizens’ demand. Four proposals were made for the advancement of the elections to 2024 or even 2023, but none of them was accepted.
Conclusion
Castillo's attempted coup can be interpreted in two ways. First, its failure can be seen as a positive thing because it shows that democratic institutions such as Congress, despite their flaws, are working. Secondly, it can be perceived as something negative because his attempt has put Peru in a complex situation that could in the long run turn into a real crisis of governability and lead, taking the example of other Latin American countries, to the establishment of a dictatorial government as in Nicaragua or a populist government as in Venezuela. The current situation in Peru is in fact a reflection of the political crisis that has plagued the country since the beginning of the twenty-first century.
More than 20 years after the democratic transition, the population has the same demand: to redefine the link between political representatives and the citizens being represented.
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