From Lima
President Pedro Castillo he has described his new ministerial cabinet as “the beginning of a new stage” 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 has chosen as head of the cabinet a former congresswoman from the moderate left, Mirtha Vasquez, that she has been president of Parliament and has shown a capacity for consultation. Dialogante, a lawyer linked to the defense of human rights and a feminist, has a very different profile from that of the outgoing chief of the cabinet, the questioned Guido Bellido, whose management was marked by confrontation, even with members of the government itself, and highly criticized for past sexist and homophobic statements.
With this change of cabinet, Castillo seeks to tone down the harsh confrontation with the opposition, which demanded the departure of Bellido. The extreme right, formed by Fujimori and two other groups, which add 43 seats out of a total of 130 in the unicameral Parliament, it had managed to unite other sectors of a more moderate right and center in a bloc against the government, united by their questioning of Bellido, which gave them 88 votes, one more of the 87 necessary to remove the head of state appealing to the ambiguous figure of “moral incapacity”, which leaves the door open to remove the president in a summary process appealing to any reason. Legislators from that extreme right-wing coup were already talking about promoting Castillo’s removal from office.
A first effect of the change of cabinet would be to break, at least in the immediate term, that alliance that the extreme right-wing coup had built to seek the fall of the government. Although this ultra-right wing will not put aside its coup efforts and has already begun to criticize the new cabinet, the change has been well received by other opposition groups, with which the government is now seeking to build bridges. This gives Castillo a break. A government that is a minority in a Congress where right-wing extremism seeks to build an alliance to overthrow it, needs to build bridges with the most moderate sectors of that opposition, without this implying setting aside the promises of change, which Castillo has reiterated are his priority. The change of cabinet facilitates this task, which the previous head of the ministerial team never wanted to carry out, on the contrary, he did everything possible to blow up those possible bridges.
But this “new stage” announced by the president has not been well received in the intern by the leadership of the ruling party. Free Peru (PL), who defines himself as a Marxist-Leninist. Bellido was backed by the leadership of PL, headed by his secretary general, Vladimir Cerrón, of the so-called “Radical sector” of the ruling party. This sector, which was pressing for more power in the government, has been the great defeated with the change of the cabinet. The first reaction of an outraged Cerrón has been to threaten the government with removing the support of the PL bench, but not all of its 37 members are aligned with Cerrón.
“This is a better cabinet than the previous 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 interfered a lot in Castillo’s actions and it seemed that there were two presidents. Such a government could not function. Now Castle It will no longer have that interference and there will be greater unity within the government, ”he told Page 12 the sociologist Sinesio Lopez, university professor and columnist for the newspaper The Republic.
The new cabinet must ask Congress for a vote of confidence and to obtain it, it needs the support of at least one sector of the opposition. The first statements by spokesmen for the more moderate opposition would aim to give confidence to the cabinet headed by Mirtha Vásquez. But now the vote of a sector of the PL ruling party is not certain, which if it complies with the threats launched by Cerrón could vote against the cabinet of his government, with which in his eagerness to fight to gain more power in the government , Cerrón and his group would end up playing the game to the extreme right that wants to blow up Castillo’s presidency.
“Cerrón and Bellido will have to manage their anger and frustration, if they insist on their stance against the new cabinet they will isolate themselves, their position would be a minority on the government bench. Castillo may have problems in Congress with Peru Libre, but not as many as Cerrón imagines. The far right will never be satisfiedIt will always look for something to attack the government, but with this new cabinet the government can have a better relationship with the center and the center right, and also with the business community, ”says López.
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