Pedro Castillo, the surprising and unexpected winner of the presidential elections of Peru, assumes the Presidency this Wednesday with the country divided between the hope and uncertainty that his figure arouses and his promises of change, which include a referendum to formulate a new Constitution.
At the beginning of the year, this rural school teacher and teacher union leader was unknown to Peruvians and did not enter the pools to be the new president. But although his face was almost anonymous, his reformist program caught on a country jaded by its traditional political class and desperate for the covid-19 pandemic, which produced a violent blow to the economy.
His presidential inauguration will have a strong symbolic charge, because on the same day that Peru commemorates the 200 years of its independence, for the first time in the country’s history, someone who emerged directly from the Andean countryside arrives at the head of state. completely oblivious to its historical political elites, very restless before its irruption.
On his way to the presidential seat, he was very emphatic about the need for the State to have greater intervention in the economy, considering that the free market paradigm increased inequalities between the richest and the poorest despite the great growth that the country had. in the last decades.
A giant pencil, the emblem of the master Pedro Castillo’s campaign. Photo: AFP
President with hat
Castillo will put on the president’s band this Wednesday without taking off his “chotano” hat, made of straw and wide brim, the identity emblem of the peasants of Cajamarca, a region in the north of the Peruvian Andes where the president-elect was born.
In the ceremony to be held in the Congress of Peru, the King of Spain, Felipe VI, as well as several presidents and senior representatives of countries in the region, including the Argentine Alberto Fernandez and the bolivian Luis Arce.
Before them, Castillo will deliver a long-awaited first speech as president after having made a show after the elections of a ironclad secrecy about the composition of his cabinet, whose members have not yet been revealed.
The outgoing president of Peru, Francisco Sagasti, will present the presidential sash this Wednesday to maestro Pedro Castillo. Photo: EFE
Hope and fear
In the streets, Peruvians receive Professor Castillo faced between hope (34%) and uncertainty (29%), between trust (16%) and fear (15%), as reflected in a recent survey carried out by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP).
Those fears have their own name: Vladimir Cerrón, the leader and founder of the Peru Libre party, whom Castillo replaced as the presidential candidate of the political formation because he was legally disqualified from running due to a conviction for corruption when he was governor of the Andean region of Junín. .
Until now, it is unknown how much influence this Cuban-trained neurosurgeon will have within the Castillo government and who is currently the best-known face of the Peruvian radical left.
The rejection that Cerrón generates is so great that 85% of Peruvians do not want to see him actively around the Executive, something that Castillo seems to share, whose attitude is more concerting and conciliatory than that of the president of his party.
Right-wing leader Keiko Fujimori denounced fraud, but justice dismissed it. Photo: AFP
Hostile weather
The opposing feelings that Castillo generates are the product of the deep polarization and tension that Peru experienced during the electoral campaign and the weeks that followed, when the right-wing Keiko Fujimori did not accept her defeat and denounced without reliable evidence the existence of a “fraud”, nonexistent for Peruvian Justice and for the international community.
After leaving the country with the dilemma “freedom or communism”, Fujimori delayed the official proclamation of Castillo for a month and a half with more than a thousand demands on the alleged “fraud” that were rejected en bloc by the electoral juries as they lacked support. .
The confrontation was hostile and led to massive marches, some of them violent, with threats to take the Government Palace, and even with retired military personnel, including elected congressmen, urging the Armed Forces not to recognize Castillo, which in the practice would be a coup.
In the end, all worn out by that pulse, the electoral justice endorsed the results of the polls, which gave Castillo a victory by the minimum by obtaining 50.12% of the votes valid, 44,263 votes more than Fujimori.
Key to his triumph was “antifujimorismo” and the strong rejection that exists against his rival, who participated in the electoral process while facing an accusation of more than 30 years in prison for alleged money laundering in his previous electoral campaigns.
The professor was elected as president for the period 2021-2026 and will receive a country that has become the one with the highest mortality from covid-19 by accumulating almost 200,000 deaths, and with an economy in full recovery after the hit of 2020, where an 11 was contracted. , 8%.
Source: EFE
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source https://pledgetimes.com/peru-between-hope-and-uncertainty-due-to-the-arrival-of-pedro-castillo-to-power/
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