Peru: with the change of cabinet, Pedro Castillo relaunches his government | The president described the measure as “the start of a new stage”.

From Lima

President Pedro Castillo he described his new cabinet as “the start of a new phase” in his government. This only two months after taking office. He indicated that in this “new stage” priority will be given to “dialogue, governance and joint work”, for which he chose as chief of staff a former member of the moderate left, Mirtha Vasquez, that she was President of Parliament and that she demonstrated a capacity for consultation. Dialogante, a lawyer linked to the defense of human rights and feminist, has a very different profile from that of the outgoing chief of staff, the defendant Guido Bellido, whose management has been marked by confrontation, even with members of the government itself, and much criticized for past sexist and homophobic statements.

With this change of cabinet, Castillo seeks to ease the harsh confrontation with the opposition, which demanded the departure of Bellido. The far right, made up of Fujimori and two other groups, which has 43 seats out of a total of 130 in the unicameral parliament he had succeeded in uniting other sectors of a more moderate right and center into a bloc against the government, united by their interpellation of Bellido, which gave them 88 votes, one more of the 87 necessary to remove the head of state by appealing to the ambiguous figure of “moral incapacity”, which leaves the door open to the dismissal of the president in a summary procedure appealing to any reason. The lawmakers of this far-right coup were already talking about promoting Castillo’s impeachment.

A first effect of the change of cabinet would be to break, at least for the time being, this alliance that the far-right coup d’état had built to demand the fall of the government. While this ultra-right will not put aside its coup efforts and has already started criticizing the new cabinet, the change has been welcomed by other opposition groups, with whom the government is now seeking to build bridges. This gives Castillo a break. A minority government in a Congress where right-wing extremism seeks to build an alliance to overthrow it, must build bridges with the more moderate sectors of this opposition, without this implying setting aside promises of change, which Castillo reiterated as his priority. The change of cabinet facilitates this task, which the former head of the ministerial team never wanted to accomplish, on the contrary, he did everything to blow up these possible bridges.

But this “new step” announced by the president was not well received internally by the leadership of the ruling party. Free peru (PL), who defines himself as Marxist-Leninist. Bellido was supported by the leadership of the PL, led by its secretary general, Vladimir cerron, of what we call “Radical sector” of the ruling party. This sector, which demanded more power from the government, was the big defeated with the change of cabinet. The first reaction of an outraged Cerrón was to threaten the government with withdrawing support from the PL bench, but not all of its 37 members are aligned with Cerrón.

“It’s a better firm than the last one. This change strengthens the government of Castillo, makes it more homogeneous, coherent and more efficient. In the previous cabinet, Bellido was the spokesperson for Cerrón, who wanted to lead the government and meddled a lot in Castillo’s actions and it looked like there were two presidents. Such a government could not work. Now Castillo There will no longer be this interference and there will be greater unity within the government, ”he said. Page 12 the sociologist Sinesio López, university professor and newspaper columnist The Republic.

The new cabinet must ask Congress for a vote of confidence and to get it it needs the support of at least one sector of the opposition. The first statements by spokespersons for the more moderate opposition are said to be aimed at giving confidence to the cabinet headed by Mirtha Vásquez. But now the vote of a sector of the PL’s ruling bench is not certain, who if he complies with the threats made by Cerrón could vote against his government’s cabinet, with which in its eagerness to fight for gain more power in government, Cerrón and his group would end up playing the game of the far right who wants to blow up Castillo’s presidency.

“Cerrón and Bellido will have to manage their anger and frustration, if they insist on their position against the new cabinet, they will isolate themselves, their position would be in the minority on the government bench. Castillo could have congressional problems with Peru Libre, but not as much as Cerrón imagines. The far right will never be satisfied“He will always look for something to attack the government, but with this new cabinet, the government can have better relations with the center and center right, and also with the business world,” López explains.