Saint Joseph. – The political bets in Peru are swaying between two options.
On one side of any imaginary game table, no one dares to bet when the government of Peruvian President Pedro Castillo will fall, or if the collapse is near or if there is still a long political and institutional ordeal to go through before the final collapse occurs.
On the other side of the pendulum, no one risks guaranteeing that the questioned president will manage to complete his administration and, in a convulsive scenario of accelerated political tension, arrive as Head of State on July 28, 2026 to hand over power to his successor.
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Castillo took office on July 28, 2021 and, against all odds inside and outside Peru and his own environment of trust or closeness ring, on Thursday of last week he completed the first of his five years in office.
Although he was able to cover—and with difficulty—the initial 12 months of administration, the ruler advanced in the following days under a storm with predictions of a hurricane and without any player daring to refuse to bet on one of Castillo’s alternatives: uneven continuity of the mandate , abrupt outcome of the government, voluntary resignation, dismissal via legislation, forced or negotiated exile or… jail.
The president is accused of the alleged crimes of alleged cover-up, plagiarism of his thesis, irregular promotions in the Peruvian Armed Forces and criminal organization, money laundering, influence peddling and aggravated collusion in the Ministry of Transport and Communications. In this context, Castillo won, in November 2021 and March 2022, two processes of vacancy or substitution in Congress for “moral incapacity”.
With this judicial platform, with little legislative support and in the face of a massive media attack, the questions are gigantic about the future of the ruler who is also an educator (teacher or professor), teachers’ unionist and peasant patrol or vigilante.
Surprisingly elevated to the status of politician and presidential candidate and questioned about his real abilities to govern, Castillo won in 2021—on April 11 and June 6—the first and second rounds of the presidential elections, in another demonstration of the general deterioration of the traditional political class of Peru.
“Castillo’s departure can be given in a matter of one or two weeks or less. We do not know. It can be more. But the president is unsustainable,” said Peruvian lawyer and political scientist Josef Zielinski, professor of Political Science at the (non-state) University of Lima.
“Every day there is something new against the president. Any ruler with half a brain would have already resigned,” Zielinski told EL UNIVERSAL.
Describing that the scenario resembles a Russian roulette game of chance with various ammunition in the barrel of a revolver placed on the temple to challenge fate by turning the cylinder without knowing the position of the projectiles, Zielinski narrated that in the situation Castillo’s policy “it seems that there is less and less possibility that there are no bullets in the gun.”
“It is true that in a year of Castillo’s government he has withstood a lot of attack and still seems to benefit from beginner’s luck. But how long will he last? Logic says that he is not going to be able to hold out under this situation of permanent attack for the next four years,” he predicted.
“If Castillo resigns today, for example, in a maximum month he will be subject to a preventive detention measure. The handling that Castillo and his lawyers have made of these cases has been very clumsy. But let us remember that Peru is unpredictable in politics. It’s like famous crime novels where you don’t know what’s going to happen on the next page,” he recounted.
Breaking off
Castillo was victorious at the polls as the candidate of the leftist and then opposition Free Peru party… without being a leftist. That is why, in another scenario of shock and distancing that deepened his loneliness, he broke with Peru Libre several months after settling in the Government Palace, one of the traditional centers of power in Lima.
“Empty presidential speech,” tweeted Peruvian doctor and politician Vladimir Cerrón, general secretary of Peru Libre, reaffirming his distance from Castillo and lambasting him on the 28th of last month for the message he delivered to Congress for the first anniversary. “Without the necessary moral energy, without commitment to real change, without announcements of restructuring the state,” he added.
Castillo’s outlook continued to get complicated this week.
On Wednesday, lawyer Aníbal Torres resigned as prime minister, Castillo’s fourth since July 2021 and in another display of the deep and prolonged instability of more than 12 months in the Council of Ministers. In an expected announcement, Castillo tweeted last night that, by not accepting his resignation, Torres promised to continue “working for our country.”
On Thursday, the Peruvian Congress denied him permission to travel from today to Monday to Bogotá as a guest at the inauguration tomorrow of Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia. In reaction, the president tweeted: “I regret that, in an unusual and arrogant way (the congress) prevents me from attending” Colombia.
That same day he appeared before the National Prosecutor’s Office for one of the proceedings against him and argued that “I am not part of any criminal network”, announced that he will prove his innocence and reiterated that “I have robbed no one, killed no one and I will not do it”.
“The people have put me here and I will always answer for the people,” he insisted.
But the political storm intensified.
Peruvian deputy Patricia Chirinos, from the opposition party Avanza País, told the press in her country that “this government will probably end sooner. We are witnessing this dying man coming out of power. He is already a corpse, he is a living dead who keeps walking and I think we are all waiting for the day when this government finally falls”.