Peruvians Have No Trust in Political Class to Solve Crisis

Date: 30 January 2023 - 21:47

News ID: ۱۱۱۹۳۸

LIMA (AFP) -- With a political class that is widely mistrusted and seen as weak and out of touch, Peruvians have grown increasingly disillusioned that a solution to weeks of violent unrest is at hand, experts told AFP.
The national Congress was due to debate again on Monday a proposal to bring forward elections slated for April 2024 in a bid to break a political deadlock that has seen 48 deaths over seven weeks of near-daily protests.
Parliament rejected such a move on Saturday, however, and analysts doubt this time will be different.
“This is a toxic Congress. It is rejected by 88 percent of the population, according to polls,” said Alonso Cardenas, a public policy specialist in Lima.
Cardenas said Congress has been widely discredited -- branded by one civil association as “the most corrupt” institution in the country.
“Congress, like almost all the political class in Peru, lives with its back to the country. It doesn’t understand” the people, said Roger Santa Cruz of the Antonio Ruiz de Montoya University in Lima.
In the early hours of Saturday, following seven hours of debate, lawmakers voted against bringing forward elections from April 2024 to October this year.
That proposal, from opposition politician Hernando Guerra Garcia, came after beleaguered president Dina Boluarte said Friday that she had told her ministers to suggest December as a possible date for a general election.
Protesters have kept pressure on the authorities since December 7, the day ousted president Pedro Castillo was arrested after attempting to dissolve parliament and rule by decree. Demonstrators want immediate elections, Boluarte’s resignation and dissolution of Congress.
Castillo’s supporters, many of them peasants and Indigenous peoples from the countryside, have blocked roads, forced some airport closures, and clashed with security forces in Lima and other cities.
Boluarte is from the same left-wing party as Castillo -- she was his vice president before his arrest -- but her support since then has come from the conservative opposition.
Now “the alliance that supports Boluarte is cracking,” said Cardenas.
The left has demanded a referendum on rewriting the constitution as a condition for supporting advanced elections, but that has little support elsewhere.
Congress is fractured into at least 10 political forces, with no strong leaders or dominant personalities, the experts say.
Boluarte’s resignation would not end the crisis, Cardenas and Santa Cruz said, as there is no experienced, unifying figure to replace her.
Peru is no stranger to political instability. Since 2018, it has been led by no fewer than six presidents who span the political spectrum.