From Lima
Less than a week before the first ministerial cabinet of the president Pedro Castillo obtained the vote of confidence in the Congress, controlled by the right-wing opposition, the government faces a ministerial crisis. The chief of the cabinet, Guido Bellido, announced on Monday the departure of the Labor Minister, Iber MaravĂ, who he said he had asked to resign, but the minister refused to resign and the change has been frozen by President Castillo, who until the moment of sending this note had not defined the situation of his minister. This lack of definition aggravates the uncertainty and the crisis. MaravĂ, a teacher and trade unionist like Castillo, is the target of a campaign of attacks that link him to the defeated Maoist armed group Sendero Luminoso, a relationship that he denies.
Immediately after granting the vote of confidence to the cabinet last Friday, the extreme right, which had unsuccessfully promoted the fall of the Council of Ministers, reacted by threatening to overthrow the ministers “one by one”, promoting their interpellation and censorship, an attribution of Parliament. MaravĂ tops that blacklist on the right. With this threat from the opposition on the table and a media campaign against MaravĂ accusing him of being a “terrorist”, the chief of the cabinet asked him to resign. Minutes later he made it public and declared that the change of the Minister of Labor was necessary for “the stability of the government” and “to maintain harmony with the different benches (of Congress).” But the minister MaravĂ was unaware of the authority of the chief of the cabinet, did not resign and went to look for President Castillo to ask him to define his situation. He put his position at the disposal of the president in a letter in which he describes the accusations against him as “false” and says that the objective is “to destabilize the government.”
Delay
Castillo’s delay in defining the matter fuels speculation that the president would endorse the labor minister. A decision that would leave the head of the cabinet in a bad way, who now, out of place, says that his request to resign from the minister had been “a suggestion.” Not to mention MaravĂ, Castillo pointed out in a public event that the opposition intends to “lay down ministers to place their allies.” MaravĂ is considered one of the ministers closest to the president, part of the core of professors that surround Castillo. His fall would be a severe blow to the president. With the Minister of Labor still in office, the parliamentary opposition presented on Wednesday a request to question him, with the aim of censuring him, a measure that would force him to resign.
MaravĂ, 60, is accused by the opposition of having participated in attacks committed by Shining Path in the eighties. The media have dusted off an old police report from 1981 in which he is accused of attacks with explosives against public places in the Andean city of Ayacucho, where Sendero emerged in 1980. It is said that two detainees syndicate him. But MaravĂ was never prosecuted for those events, which the minister uses as an argument for defense and innocence. “I reject any act of terrorism, no matter where it comes from. If they had found responsibility, they would have been convicted “, MaravĂ defends himself. Although there was never a judicial process, the opposition disseminates the content of that old police report as if it were a conviction against the minister. In the years of the internal war, thousands of innocents were accused of terrorism, many of them convicted, and thousands more were disappeared and murdered.
Unrest
MaravĂ is also questioned for a suspended four-year prison sentence given in 2009 for “disturbances”, for his participation as union leader in a protest by the teachers in 2004 in Ayacucho. The minister assures that that sentence was without effect. The accusation is related to a policy of criminalization of social protests. MaravĂ is the leader of the teachers’ union that President Castillo headed up until his election. Police reports accuse him of having ties to the Movement for Amnesty and Fundamental Rights (Movadef), considered as the political heir to Sendero that was defeated more than two decades ago. Accusation that has also been made against Castillo. The president and the Minister of Labor deny being close to Movadef.
Added to this crisis due to the uncertain situation of the Minister of Labor is the accusation of an opposition congresswoman against the chief of the ministerial cabinet for allegedly having verbally attacked her weeks ago – he would have told her “You just need to be raped”-, although he only makes it public now, days after the cabinet obtained the vote of confidence. Bellido has denied the accusation and has said that it is part of a conspiracy to destabilize the government. Different sectors, including government allies, demand an investigation into this serious complaint. But, without investigation, the opposition and the media accept what the congresswoman said as true and demand the resignation of the chief of the cabinet.
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