Peru: the far right has taken power | Under the …

From Lima. The ultra-conservative right has seized the Peruvian government. The ministerial cabinet of new President Manuel Merino – who took office on Tuesday after the Congress he chaired dismissed Martín Vizcarra for “permanent moral incapacity”, a move that sparked protests across the country – is led by a member of the discredited. old political guard, linked to the extreme right. The ministerial team is made up of figures aligned with this conservatism, including several linked to Fujimorism and the Aprista Party of former President Alan García, who have been in government and have been implicated in serious corruption scandals and human rights violations. .

President Merino’s cabinet leaves the feeling of a return to the worst past. The toughest right-wing celebrates the new government, while the streets are rocked by protests. Merino and his isolated government face the biggest anti-government mobilisations since the last months of the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori in 2000.

As the new president swore in his cabinet, sacked ex-president Martín Vizcarra appeared before the prosecution to testify to accusations of receiving bribes from two construction companies while he was a few years ago governor of the Moquegua region. The prosecution asked to be prevented from leaving the country for eighteen months. “I am not going to leave the country, I am not going to any embassy,” Vizcarra said.

The new prime minister is the lawyer Antero Flores Aráoz, 78, an ultra-conservative who entered politics as a member of the right-wing Christian People’s Party. In 1990, he was elected deputy of the right-wing front which launched the writer’s presidential candidacy. Mario Vargas Llosa. After a long stay in Congress, of which he became president, he left his party and joined the second government of Alan garcia (2006-2011) as Minister of Defense. In 2016 he tried to run for president, leading his own party, Orden, and came in last place with just 0.4%. Now Merino has resurrected him.

In recent years, Flores Aráoz had devoted himself to signing declarations with anti-rights allegations as part of the so-called Republican Coordinator, which brings together the most radical of Peruvian conservatism. He is linked to ultra-conservative groups such as “Don’t Mess With My Kids”. A few years ago, in statements denouncing his racism, he said that “llamas and vicuñas” could not be questioned when asked if the free trade agreement with the United States should be submitted. to a referendum.

Amid protests, interior ministry was taken over by former police general Gaston Rodriguez, who previously held this post with Vizcarra between April and July of this year and who had no problem joining the regime that just toppled the government to which he recently belonged. His previous brief term ended when he was forced to step down after being criticized for appointing a lawyer defending police officers on death squad charges and a general accused of corruption as an advisor.

The UN human rights office said it was receiving “disturbing information” about the police crackdown on protests against Merino. Despite the repression and the pandemic, the mobilizations against the new government, which the demonstrators qualify as a “usurper”, are increasing and replicating in the main cities of the country. The new government is trying to minimize the protests, but the streets deny it. Yesterday, the mobilizations were massive. Flores Aráoz has denied the police crackdown that everyone has seen and accused the media of “magnifying” the protests and “exasperating the spirits” for reporting on the protests.

As expected, the new cabinet guarantees the continuity of the neoliberal economic model, in force in the country for thirty years. As Minister of the Economy, the economist assumes Jose arista, who was Doing’s deputy minister in Alan García’s second government.

In health, a key ministry at this stage, assumes the doctor Abel Salinas, member of the Aprista Party. Salinas was already at the forefront of this sector during the last two months of the Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, when he faced corruption charges, for which he resigned in March 2018. The promoters of the dismissal of Vizcarra, with Merino in the lead, accused him of having had “a terrible management of the pandemic”, but in a sample of inconsistency did they ask the outgoing government’s health minister, Pilar Mazzetti, let him stay in the office. Mazzetti declined the offer. Salinas is the fourth Minister of Health since the outbreak of the pandemic.

In the rest of the cabinet, there are other characters linked to Aprismo, including a former Minister of Transport and Communications in the first government of Alan García (1985-1990) who returns to this post, in Fujimori, Merino Acción Popular party, which is divided between its support and rejection of the new government, and other sectors of the right.

The parliamentary groups that supported the arrival of the new head of state as president are beginning to distribute influence and power in the new government. One of its interests is to prevent the advancement of anti-corruption processes that complicate many of its key leaders –Keiko Fujimori and several others, and which the government of Vizcarra had promoted.

The continuity of an educational reform seen as fundamental is also threatened, which has closed down shoddy universities turned into millionaire companies. Two of the parties that voted to suppress Vizcarra and put Merino in power are led by businessmen linked to this activity. Flores Aráoz, linked to these interests, said after being appointed ministerial chief of staff that the universities closed for being seen as a student scam “deserve a second chance”.

The leftist Wide front, who joined this right-wing coalition that ousted Vizcarra and put Merino in power, is now criticizing the new government’s right-wing course, something predictable that should come as no surprise.