In five years, Dina Boluarte is the sixth person to occupy the presidency of the Peruvian Republic. A lawyer without political experience, she legally accessed there after dismissal and the arrest, on December 7, of the Head of State, the socialist Pedro Castillo, of which she was the vice-president. Mr. Castillo, narrowly elected in July 2021, is accused of attempted coup to have, in early December, wanted to dissolve the Parliament which was about to chase it from power. The seventeen months of his presidency had been marked by incompetence and instability. But, a teacher of modest origin, he represented a hope, for the peasant and native populations of the underprivileged and marginalized Andes, to be finally heard by the powerful elites of Lima.
The dismissal of Mr. Castillo triggered the revolt. Protest demonstrations and road blockages are constantly expanding, despite a brutal repression. Since the start of events, at least 48 people have died and hundreds have been injured. The police respond to stone jets by sometimes pulling real bullets. The acting president, a former ally of Mr. Castillo, now associated with the right in the repression, has become the target of the protesters, who claim her resignation. The attitude of M me
é> boluarte, which ensures that it has prohibited the use of lethal weapons, raises the question of its maintenance in power.
While the UN Human Rights Office says it is “very concerned about the rise of violence” and the State prosecutor of Peru has opened an investigation for “genocide”, it is time to stop the deadly drift and to find other means than violence to find a way out of the crisis, in a country already terribly tested by the COVVID – mortality is the highest in the world per capita. Without waiting for April 2024, now advanced deadline, new elections must take place. 2>
mediocrity, amateurism and corruption
The crisis of Peruvian democracy, particularly worrying in the regional context of the attempted destabilization targeting the Brazilian president Lula, has deep roots. The country has never reached stability since the return of democracy in 2000, after the flight of the Autocrat Alberto Fujimori, condemned for corruption and always imprisoned. With each presidential election, Keiko Fujimori maintains the current of the populist, neoliberal and authoritarian far -right that his father embodied. As for the 1993 Constitution, inherited from “Fujimorisme”, it perpetuates the precariousness of the system, in particular by allowing the elected officials of the Congress to remove the president without serious justification.
Thus, no lasting solution to the recurring chaos from which Peru suffers can save institutional reforms. While political parties are only conglomerates of particular interests, that many of them are controlled by businessmen who place them at their exclusive service, while mediocrity, amateurism and corruption dominate political circles, The country cannot get out of its permanent slump without deep changes in its mode of governance. Face the immense social, economic, agrarian and environmental challenges faced by Peru supposes, in this country as elsewhere, the representation and taking into account all categories of society.