Opinion: Latin American presidents should boost, not sabotage, Peru’s beleaguered democracy
The presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras and Cuba are trying to rewrite history about recent events in Peru: They are casting doubt on legitimacy of that country’s President Dina Boluarte, circulating the lie that there was a congressional coup there.
By any legal or moral measure, that’ simply not true.
What’s worse, they are adding fuel to the fire in Peru. At least 56 people have died in recent clashes between police and violent radical leftist groups seeking Boluarte’s resignation.
Most Peruvian constitutional experts agree that, while any excessive use of force against the protesters should be investigated and, if necessary, punished, there is no doubt that
Boluarte is the legitimate president.
She is a leftist politician who was the next in line in Peru’s constitutional order after leftist former President Pedro Castillo was impeached and removed from office for launching a coup to grab absolute powers.
On Dec. 7, Castillo went on national television to order the dissolution of Congress and announce that he would rule by decree. It was a classic self-coup, just like the one carried out by the country’s right-wing President Alberto Fujimori in 1992.
Yet, the presidents of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico and other countries are turning the facts upside down, trying to portray Castillo as an innocent victim.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said in a videotaped message to the Jan. 24 summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Argentina that, “It’s an infamy what was done to Pedro Castillo and the way they are repressing the people” in Peru. The presidents of Colombia, Argentina,
Bolivia and Chile made similar comments.
Cuban dictator Miguel Diaz-Canel, whose country has not allowed a free election in 64 years, had claimed earlier that Castillo’s dismissal was “the result of a process led by the dominant oligarchies to subvert the will of the people.” So Cuba is now giving lessons on democracy. How ironic.
Curious about these allegations, I interviewed former Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti, who led the country during the 2021 elections and transferred power to Castillo.
Sagasti, an engineer and former World Bank adviser who last week moved to Washington to join the Wilson Center think tank, told me that, “Unfortunately, some leaders of other countries have a very distorted perception of recent events in Peru.”
Granted, it’s true that conservatives had falsely claimed that Castillo had won through fraud and had gone out of their way to make his life difficult once he took office.
But there’s no question that his order to dissolve Congress was a violation of the constitution, and that, “He was on his way to becoming a dictator, which is absolutely unacceptable,” Sagasti told me.
As for President Boluarte,
she is a legitimate president, “because there has not been a break of constitutional order, as some would like us to believe,” he added.
Asked about Peru’s recent violence, the former president said that, unlike countries that suffer from political polarization, Peru suffers from political “atomization,” meaning that it has many ethnic and political factions that are fiercely opposed to each other.
To emerge from this crisis, he is proposing a “credible mediator” such as Peru’s Interreligious Council, a group made up of 16 religious denominations, to take the protesters’ demands to authorities, and seek a negotiated solution with early elections. Boluarte has offered to hold early elections this year or in early 2024.
Critics are right to demand an investigation into whether security forces used extreme force to quell the violent protests in recent weeks. But Latin American countries should be helping Peru’s beleaguered President Boluarte, instead of pulling the rug out from under her.
Watch the full interview with former Peruvian President Francisco Sagasti at 7 p.m. Sunday on CNN en Español. Twitter: @oppenheimera