In the midst of the escalation of the confrontation between the government of Pedro Castillo and the right-wing opposition Congress, the ministerial cabinet fell. It is the fourth cabinet to fall in just 16 months of government. The head of the Council of Ministers, Aníbal Torres, resigned after Congress refused to debate the request for confidence that he had presented to the unicameral Parliament. With his departure, the entire cabinet is restructured, although the other ministers can remain in office. The matter has exacerbated the conflictive relationship between the Legislative and the Executive.
For the government, there was a rejection of the confidence that the cabinet requested from Congress, when it refused to debate the issue. And that’s why the cabinet resigns, as required by law when it is denied confidence in Congress. But for the parliamentary opposition, the request for confidence did not meet the legal requirements to be presented and for this reason it was rejected without being debated in plenary, which, they point out, cannot be taken as a refusal of the confidence presented. This controversy is key. If Congress denies trust to a ministerial cabinet twice in the same period of government, the Executive is empowered to dissolve it and must call new legislative elections. For the government, the first refusal of confidence would have already taken place, which would leave Congress in the dark. The parliamentary opposition, which applauds the departure of Torres but does not want a first refusal of confidence in a cabinet to be counted, has reacted by rejecting that interpretation of the government and threatening the president with a constitutional accusation to dismiss him, if the Executive insists on that position. .
The twists and turns of the law
The new cabinet is obliged to request the confidence of Parliament to be ratified. The new head of the cabinet is the until yesterday Minister of Culture, Betssy Chávez. This designation of someone who arrives questioned to this position, challenges Congress. Chávez is being investigated for favoring relatives of her partner with appointments in the State, and last May she was censured by Congress when she was Minister of Labor, for which she had to resign. Then Castillo relocated it to Culture. But Chávez is not only questioned by the opposition. The new head of the ministerial cabinet is also a congresswoman, elected by the Peru Libre party that brought Castillo to power, but a few months ago she was expelled from that party, where her appointment has gone down badly. At the time of dispatch of this dispatch, the other cabinet ministers had not been appointed. Vice President Dina Boluarte, who since the beginning of the government has been Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, questioned the high level of polarization and went ahead to announce that she will not continue in the cabinet.
In this very tense environment, of polarized positions with no understanding in sight, if the parliamentary majority decides to deny confidence to the new cabinet of the questioned Chávez, an unpredictable scenario would open up, in which the Executive, based on its interpretation of what What happened with the question of confidence that Torres presented, would dissolve Parliament, arguing that there is a second refusal of confidence in a cabinet. And Congress, as various legislators have already announced, would reject that decision -for them it would be the first refusal of confidence- calling it unconstitutional and would demand the removal of the president.
Fujimori’s legacy
The resigning chief of staff, Aníbal Torres, raised a question of confidence before Congress with the government’s request to repeal a law from this Parliament that requires authorization from Congress to call a referendum to call a Constituent Assembly. This would modify the current questioned Constitution of 1993, inherited from the dictatorship of Alberto Fujimori and with a strong neoliberal content. This was one of Castillo’s main flags in the electoral campaign. And it is also a demand from the rest of the left and various social organizations and citizen sectors. The right wing that controls Congress has made a matter of State in defense of the Fujimori Constitution and from Congress it blocks the possibility of a referendum.
The board of directors of Congress, chaired by the retired far-right general José Williams, who carries a past with accusations of human rights violations, decided to “reject outright” without putting it up for debate in Congress, the request for confidence made by Torres, alleging that this could not be presented by a power that “is exclusive to Congress”, such as passing a law. This is based on a controversial rule given a few months ago by this same Congress. The parliamentary right has passed a series of laws that reduce the powers of the Executive and reinforce the power of Congress, among them the limits placed on the question of trust, to which the opposition now alludes to ignore the request for trust made by the resigning chief of the cabinet.
The goal is the hit
The government accuses the right-wing parliamentary opposition of plotting from the beginning of Castillo’s administration to carry out a coup. There have already been three frustrated attempts to remove the president from Congress and others are underway. Now Congress says that the Executive seeks to force the constitutional figure of the request for confidence to dissolve the opposition Parliament, after which it would have to call new legislative elections. In the midst of this proxy war and the worsening of the political crisis, the discredit of the political class and the demand that “they all go away” grows. According to a survey carried out this month by the Institute of Peruvian Studies, 56 percent are in favor of bringing forward general elections to change Congress and the Executive.