Pedro Castillo received the credentials as President-elect of Peru and his lawmakers were sworn in with the promise to reform the Constitution

The National Jury of Elections of Peru (JNE) presented this Friday the credentials as president-elect to Pedro Castillo, leader of Free Peru, and its vice-president Dina boluarte during a ceremony where the new president launched a message in favor of national unity at the political and social level.

The event took place in the auditorium The Incas of the Ministry of Culture and there have been different leaders of the country’s electoral bodies. “In this government, no one is left behind, and for that I am extremely grateful, and I want to tell you that I feel empowered and engaged. Long live the Peruvian peopleSaid Castillo, who also claimed that neither he nor his executive are “Chavists, not Communists, not extremists, let alone terrorists.”

In this sense, he expressed that he will work to fight terrorism in the country and called for national unity between political parties, businessmen, unions, university students and other sectors of Peruvian civil society, reported Trade.

Castillo also aligned himself with the outgoing president’s concern, Francisco sagasti, on how to deal with the evolution of the coronavirus-derived pandemic. “We will see how, all vaccinated, we can reactivate the economy,” said the one who will be the new president of Peru.

Castillo lawmakers sworn in Congress with promise to reform the Constitution

Lawmakers from Peru’s President-elect Pedro Castillo’s party swore when they took office on Friday that they would seek to rewrite the Constitution, sign that the plan to inject the state with a more active role in the economy will have an uphill battle in the next legislature of the fragmented Congress.

The plan to rewrite the Constitution was one of the promises of socialist Castillo during the election campaign, a goal he reiterated after finally triumphing over right-wing Keiko Fujimori, but it was not well received by the opposition parties in the new Congress.

Most of them 37 members of the Marxist Peru Libre party pledged with a show of hands that they would promote the formation of a Constituent Assembly to replace the Constitution that was written in 1993 during the government of President Alberto Fujimori, who dissolved Congress and assumed broad powers.

Castle’s intention to the rewrite of the Constitution has alarmed political and economic elites who fear a turn to the left change the current economic path of the free market; and that new taxes be imposed on the mining industry to finance expenditure on Health Yes education.

In the Congress of 130 legislators, no party in the 10 represented is strong enough to promote constitutional reform alone. The 24 seats of the Fuerza Popular, the party of Keiko Fujimori, who lost the presidency and has the second largest minority in Congress, has pledged to defend the current Magna Carta.

“For the God who teaches us to love our neighbor, for the second independence, the socialist homeland and the Constituent Assembly», Declared Guillermo Bermejo, member of Free Peru in power in the unicameral Congress, during the swearing-in.

Peru Libre, which appointed the teacher of the Castillo elementary school, was founded by the former governor and physician Vladimir Cerrón, an admirer of the leftist governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. Cerrón, who is serving a suspended prison sentence for corruption, is an active leader of the political group.

In Congress, members of the left group Together for Peru – Castillo’s ally with five seats – they also promised a new Magna Carta. But the right-wing Renovación Popular and Avanza País have joined the opposition Fuerza Popular.

“For the defense and support of democracy, for the defense of the Constitution which governs us and the defense of the independence of powers”, he vowed Alejandro Aguinaga, close associate and doctor of former President Fujimori who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for violation of human rights.

Representatives of other political groups have expressed objections to a new constitution, although they left open the possibility of supporting partial reform.

New members of Congress are sworn in assume their duties in a ceremony divided into three blocks, as a measure of social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Lawmakers plan to elect the On Monday, the president of the Congress and the ruling Peru Libre party are seeking the support of the various parties to lead the chamber, in a negotiation where the question of the Constitution will be key.

The elected president Castillo will be sworn in in Congress on July 28 and then give his first message to the nation, in which he will present his 2021-2026 government plan.

(With information from Europa Press and Reuters)

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