Perú in a critical situation: the protests against the Merino coup continue

Originally published at: http://estrategia.la/2020/11/12/peru-en-situacion-critica-siguen-las-protestas-contra-el-golpe-de-merino/ 

By Mariana Álvarez Orellana | 14/11/2020 |  Latin América and the Caribbean

Sources: Rebelión / CLAE

The situation in Peru is critical. The coup has consolidated. The armed forces and business groups have recognised Manuel Merino as president, while the the national indignenous movements, unions and feminist movements reject him and the regional governments in the south of the country have decided to not acknowledge the new president.

Manuel Merino, an opposition deputy that won his seat with barely 5,000 votes, took over as president of Perú after the Congress dismissed Martín Vizcarra after a controversial constitutional process that moves the country towards unavoidable instability in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Merino, who was and will continue being the head of the Legislative Power in a parallel manner to also hold the position of Head of State, which he assumed as the third president of Perú in four years while across the country protests were happening in opposition to the dismissal of Vizcarra and the “usurping” Congress.

The new head of state, from the right-wing party Acción Popular (AP), promised to convene a “cabinet of consensus and national unity”, composed of professionals “with the highest qualifications” and without political affiliations. Various political parties complained that the dismissal owes to a “distribution” of posts and promises among those who voted in favour of it to defend private interests.

In March 2020, Merino was elected as a member of Congress with some 5,000 votes for Acción Popular to represent the state of Tumbes. The election had 24.7 million eligible votes, and AP got 1,518,000 votes, 10% of the general vote, with which the party obtained the majority and the presidency of the Congress, after defeating Rocío Silva Santiesteban from the Frente Amplio party. He was a driver of the two motions of censure against the president Martín Vizcarra.

Meanwhile, now converted into a civilian, Vizcarra retook his private activities and expressed his “concern” about the self-imposed president, as it deals with an authority that lacks two basic conditions, legality and legitimacy. “The legality is in doubt because the Constitutional Court still hasn’t made a declaration, and the legitimacy, who gives that? The people. Then, an authority that doesn’t have defined legality nor legitimacy of support generates concern”, he concluded.

Tuesday and Wednesday were very difficult days, full of police brutality and arbitrary arrests in different cities. The humanitarian organizations don’t know how many people have been detained or where they are. Despite the repression the public continued protesting in Lima and other regions to show their opposition to the coup d’etat.

Vizcarra was accused of alleged bribes that he would have received when he was the governor of the southern region of Moquegua. The irony is that 68 of the congress members are implicated in investigations for collusion and bribes in the public prosecutor’s office. The depositors of these bribes to Vizcarra would be consortiums of businesses that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating in a case known as the Construction Club, bribes from the big construction companies -among them the Brazilian transnational Odebrech- to secure themselves road construction contracts.

With massive demonstrations of protest in the streets of different regions of the country: Lima, Huancayo, Trujillo, Arequipa, Chiclayo, Iquitos, among others-, thousands of Peruvians expressed their rejection of Manuel Merino’s assumption of the presidency, after the dismissal of the head of state Martín Vizcarra was approved by the Congress.

The immediate response of the new government was violent repression by police of the demonstrators, that left several detained and injured from rubber bullets, blows and teargas bombs. “Merino, listen, the people reject you”, “Merino Out”. “Merino is not my president”, were some of the chants that demonstrators yelled.

No country has sent congratulations to the new head of state. The Organization of American States showed its concern with the political crisis in Peru, five months from elections.

Repressive Prime Minister

The mobilization has a new reason: the election as prime minister, without a cabinet, of the lawyer and conservative politician Ántero Flores-Aráoz, who held the portfolio of Defense in the administration of Alan Garcia during the El Baguazo, which occured in 2009, that ended up with the death of 10 indigenous people from the Amazon region, as well as 24 police.

The indigenous people rejected two decrees approved in the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that permitted private companies to drill on community land in search of oil and gas. After the massacre the decrees were repealed.

In a ceremony of less than three minutes in the presidential palace with no media access, Merino took the oath of Flores-Aráoz, 78 years old, who said that he will look to leave a country organized to confront the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus and that the government won’t adopt populist measures.

The fall of the president impacts still further the already battered Peruvian institutionality and sets up a scenario marked by uncertainty. With Vizcarra out of the game, the political-institutional crisis becomes more serious and profound. The scenario remains tainted in the face of the elections and the possibility continues to appear that the vacancy might become institutionalised from here to be more like a dismissal mechanism for parliamentarian minorities.

Elected for a special period of barely more than a year, the multiple parliamentarian groups have demonstrated that they legislate according to their business agenda and political interests, in the country with the third highest number of deaths in the world due to Covid-19 for each 100 thousand inhabitants. The disconnection of the political class from the concerns of the public appears to have become a common feature in a country that suffers its worst crisis in decades.

In low profile, Merino, a cattle business owner, publicly made apologies in September after two high-ranking military leaders informed the Ministry of Defense he had called them to secure the backing of them both for the process of dismissal that was up for debate in the Congress and from which Vizcarra would leave successfully. He rejected the accusation of Vizcarra that he had conspired to dismiss and then succeed him.

Six months from scheduled elections, whoever can capitalise on the social discontent and propose thorough solutions to the concrete demands of the population, will occupy a major place in a Perú that in 2021 will celebrate its bicentenary amongst dismissals, generalised corruption, economic, social and health crises...and popular struggles.

The famous democratic institutionality

The Interamerican Commission of Human Rights (CIDH) showed its concern about the delicate political situation in which the country now is, after the Congress managed the dismissal of presidency of Martín Vizcarra, it made a call to the new State so that it might guarantee “democratic institutionality”, the full validity of the State of Law and the respect of human rights, and that the general elections will take place next year.

For his part Manuel Merino, declared that the general elections for 2021 wouldn’t be postponed and they will take place on the 11 April 2021 just as has been established.

Amnesty International highlighted that the authorities should send a clear message: the role of the security forces should be to protect the population, respecting the right to peaceful protest and the right of Courts to investigate all acts of violence and establish the corresponding criminal responsibilities.

It indicated, as well, its concern with some declarations of congress members that have suggested an amendment to the Constitution and the complaint from the American Convention on Human Rights “to reestablish the death penalty for all these corrupt presidents and high public servants”, and demanded that the authorities to immediately halt the repression of the demonstrators and guarantee the human rights of all people.

Polarization and coup

The sociologist Albert Adrianzen noted that “what happened in the Congress deepens the crisis in the country” that it enters “a stage of tension and polarization that is going to be reflected in the next elections. It is difficult to say now who could take the greatest advantage of this, but I believe that radicalism is going to gain ground”

“What has happened is terrible for democracy. What has taken precedence in the Congress is an ambition for power. The government of Merino could be an unfeasible government. Despite being very short, it could do a lot of damage”, commented the political expert Martín Tanaka.

Four presidential candidates for the April elections, the former president Ollanta Humala, the leftist Verónika Mendoza, the centrist Julio Guzmán and the right wing George Forsyth, expressed their opposition to the dismissal of Vizcarra by the Congress, which they criticised harshly.

The potential presidential candidate for Juntos por el Perú, Verónika Mendoza, highlighted that Peruvians will continue mobilising until they restore democracy. “While the illegitimate Government swears itself in to Congress, thousands of citizens in various regions express their rejection of this political class that turns its back on us and gives orders to repress us. But they don’t scare us, we will continue mobilising until we restore democracy”, she tweeted.

Mendoza pointed out that “only the people organized and mobilized could restore democracy and put the life and dignity of the people first and she criticised the congress members that voted in favour of the presidential dismissal. “The only thing that they have cared about is their immunity to flee from justice and tighten their hold on power”, she said.

Now there isn’t anymore more to expect from this political class that is rotten. Only the people organized and mobilised will be able to restore democracy and put the life and dignity of the people first, added the young leader of the centre-left.

Mariana Álvarez Orellana, is a Peruvian anthropologist, teacher and researcher and she is an analyst associated to Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico (CLAE, www.estrategia.la)

Corruption: The tool to oust Peruvian presidents

Originally published at http://estrategia.la/2020/11/10/corrupcion-la-maquina-de-deglutir-presidentes-peruanos/

By Mariana Álvarez Orellana | 12/11/2020 |  Latin América and the Caribbean

Sources: Rebelión / CLAE

The president Martín Vizcarra has also fallen: less than two months after having escaped from a first attempt of declaring the Presidency vacant, the Peruvian leader was dismissed by the Congress, that accused him of “permanent moral incapacity”, an ambiguous constitutional concept that allows a wide margin of interpretation, but refers to him having received bribes years ago when he was the governor of the southern region of Moquegua.

Five months from elections, a president of the Congress; Manuel Merino, smiled satisfied after convoking a session where he himself will put on the presidential sash that nobody handed over. Only 19 voted to save the leader and there were four abstentions.    

The decision, highlighted La Otra Mirada, shows the moral incapacity of the more than 60 parliamentarians that have indictments in the public prosecutor’s office or those that have proven cases and that are awaiting the decision of the congress to lift their parliamentary immunity.

“How have we arrived to the point that these gentleman “fathers of the Homeland” with more than one in question that puts them in a similar boat: chats, tablets, the Richard Swing case, tampered photos, bribes, protection rackets, among other things and they cook up a presidential vacancy without any proof other than a press report based only on the testimony of three candidates hoping to be witnesses with immunity that have spent the more than two years trying to obtain benefits in the public prosecutor’s office?”, it asked.

The panorama is not at all favourable, the political leaders that aren’t represented in the Congress will try to play it to their own benefit, meanwhile, in the media, there remain the millions of poor people that die not only from COVID, and hunger, but also from diphtheria, and those to which the assistance bonus hasn’t arrived and at best already it won’t arrive to them, those that perhaps won’t receive any vaccine, those to whom a pension will appear an eternal fairytale. 

Vizcarra, at 58 años, had taken the struggle against corruption as his main political rallying cry since he arrived to power,  and paradoxically, was dismissed by the Congress dominated by an opposition that accused him of moral incapacity and of receiving bribes seven years ago.

The motion of dismissal of the head of state was approved by 105 votes in favour, 18 against and four abstentions, thoroughly surpassing the 87 necessary, at the closing of a plenary session of almost eight hours. Vizcarra ruled out undertaking legal action to overturn the decision, at the same time that the streets of Lima were the setting of protests against the dismissal, and besides which it was condemned with a banging of pots and pans.

In a previous judgment on the 18th of September, Vizcarra was accused of urging two functionaries of the government palace to lie about a questioned contract made with a singer, but his adversaries only obtained 32 votes. In this way, he has become the second president that has left the post during this governmental period of five years, that started in July 2016.

Among those who voted to oust the president were Fujimorist legislators, with a long history connected to corruption, and that today savour their revenge against the man that made them lose their majority in the Parliament and supported anti-corruption processes that took their leader, Keiko Fujimori, to prison.

Also voting for his dismissal, the lawmakers from the ultranationalist Union por el Perú (Union for Perú), whose principal parliamentarians are accused of corruption and that is directed from jail by the ex-soldier Antauro Humala - brother of the ex-president Ollanta- in prison since 2004 for the death of four police officers during the capture of a police station in a frustrated attempt to topple the ex-president Alejandro Toledo.

Likewise, the legislators of Podemos Perú, a party led by a businessman that has made himself a millionaire with a business of low quality universities and that two days ago was detained being accused of bribing judges to manage an irregular inscription of his party; from a party that answers to an evangelical sect.

Also the greater part of the congress members of Acción Popular, the group of the replacement for Vizcarra; a sector of the small number of lawmakers from the leftist Frente Amplio, that only has eight members, and some other parliamentarians.

Among the few that opposed the dismissal of Vizcarra were legislators from the centrist party, Morado, and a couple of lawmakers from Frente Amplio, among some others, due to the risks of instability in these difficult circumstances, but they demanded that the public prosecutor’s office investigate the accusations against Vizcarra, something that is already underway.

Opinion polls by Ipsos and the Institute of Peruvian Studies revealed that 70 percent of the population opposed the cutting short of the presidential term in this situation. Vizcarra had an approval rate of between 54 and 57 percent, while his replacement has an approval rate that barely reaches between 22 and 24 percent.

Bye Vizcarra

Engineer by profession, Vizcarra, an almost unknown to the public, assumed power in March 2018 after the resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, cornered by complaints of corruption, a scourge in this country that has affected its last five leaders. Kuczynski invited him to be his presidential running mate in the 2016 elections due to his qualities of being able to defuse conflicts in a country where the communities protest for greater income from the exploitation of natural resources.

After assuming the post, Kuczynski included him in his cabinet to hold the portfolio of Transport and Communication, the position that he resigned from in May 2017 after receiving harsh criticism for approving changes in the $520 million contract to build an airport. His greatest challenge as president was the dissolution of the previous Congress in September 2019, after tough confrontations with the Legislature dominated by the Fuerza Popular party, of Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former dictator, Alberto Fujimori.

When Pedro Pablo Kuzcynski was dismissed, the country wasn’t facing a health emergency, nor was it a few months from an election, nor in the middle of an economic crisis from the pandemic. Today the situation is different and the congressional forces that promised to lead the country aren’t guaranteeing an ordered transition, noted Fernado Pérez García in La Otra Mirada.

And they don’t guarantee it because they represent the owners of the “Chinese” universities, that he wants to bring under university reform, they represent radical Antaurism and the spiteful Fujimorism that want its leaders out of prison and they represent the most threaten corporate right that wants to sabotage what little he has advanced in the anti-corruption process and has been paralysed by coronavirus, he added.

Who is Merino?

After the dismissal of President Martín Vizcarra by the ambiguous concept of “permanent moral incapacity”, the head of the unicameral Congress of Perú, Manuel Merino, assumed the post of president in Perú. The first great unknown that he will have to decide is resolving if he will call immediate elections (which is outlined in the Constitution) or will he wait until the 11th of April, the date that had been set out by the now former president Vizcarra for the next national vote.

Despite now managing the Executive Power of Peru, Merino, agronomist and cattle rancher, who is 59 years old, was a second rank politician always linked to Acción Popular (AP), the centre-right party founded in 1956 by Fernando Belaunde Terry, not one of its most known figures.

He held a seat in Congress during two periods: 2001-2006 and 2011-2016, representing the northwestern department of Tumbes, where he is from. He returned to Congress last January, when they carried out elections to choose the Parliament after Vizcarra had dissolved the previous one in September 2019.

The victory of Acción Popular - the largest minority in the parliament- thrust him into the Presidency of the body. He gained notoriety during the first frustrated attempt to dismiss Vizcarra, after knocking on the door of the military headquarters without success to ask for support of the military so that he could assume power, to then later give apologies for the error.

“Perhaps making a call in the circumstance of that day could have been ill-judged, for that I express my sincerest apologies to the Armed Forces”, he said after two high-ranking military chiefs informed the Minister of Defense that Merino had called them to get the backing from them both for the process of vacancy that was up for debate in the Congress.

 Now Vizcarra waits to face the investigations of the public prosecutor’s office and probably the courts. The same fate of the last presidents of Peru: Alberto Fujimori, Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta Humala, Alan García (who committed suicide), Pedro Pablo Kuczinsky.

Mariana Álvarez Orellana, is a Peruvian anthropologist, teacher and researcher and she is an analyst associated to Centro Latinoamericano de Análisis Estratégico (CLAE, www.estrategia.la)