“I would have liked to start this transitional government without violence and without human losses that hurt my heart,” exclaimed the President.
In the midst of the crisis in which Peru has been submerged for the last few days, the president In Boluarte He gave a Christmas message in which he asked the entire population to put aside violent protests and “not generate chaos when there are political interests behind it.”
“It’s not easy for me to tell each of you Merry Christmas.. I would have liked to start this transitional government without that violence and without those human losses that hurt my heart. I reiterate my condolences to the families,” the president began in her 10-minute message that was broadcast on the Peruvian afternoon of December 24.
In this sense, Boluarte asked the protesters not to continue with the seizure of airports or the burning of institutions such as the Judiciary or the Prosecutor’s Office. “What does that solve? Facing the needs of health, education, water and agriculture. What does that solve? Brothers and sisters. That doesn’t solve anything,” he said.
“The only thing I want in my capacity as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter, as a sister, is to work in peace and calm to solve what you, with just reason claim, but for that just reason that you do not take advantage and use them to generate violence in the country,” he added.
“How can we work in the midst of violence? We cannot generate chaos, disorder, when there are political interests behind it. Poverty, needs do not have ideologies, needs, hunger, have no political color,” he said.
In this regard, he asked to work “together for the country without violence, without creating chaos.” “There, those who want to generate chaos and violence, unmask themselves because it is not you, sisters and brothers who go out in peaceful marches to rightly claim what the State owes them,” exclaimed the president who was sworn in on December 7 , after Pedro Castillo was dismissed.
Finally, Boluarte insisted in his message the need to work quietly for the country with “peace, calm and legal security” to attract investment and meet needs until the end of his term.
In the midst of a temporary decrease in the intensity of the popular protest, a Peru mourning the death of 27 people is preparing to close a year full of difficulties and give way to another equally uncertain.
“In democratic terms we are not going to see a better situation, but without a doubt (President Dina Boluarte) can be sustained for a while longer,” predicted former left-wing congresswoman Indira Huilca, on the alternative channel La Mula TV. But she will do it, added Huilca, “under the same strategy: with repression and persecution.”
In the Peru of uncertainty, the next appointment at the polls is scheduled for April 2024. In other words, 2023 will be a pre-election year, despite the fact that an Executive and a Legislative had emerged from the 2021 elections, which under normal conditions should run until 2026.
If the schedule is met – they still have to be confirmed in a second parliamentary vote – Peru would have a new president and Congress in July 2024, a year and a half that seems like a century in the current circumstances.
According to a survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies (IEP), 71% of the residents disagree that Boluarte has assumed the head of state in replacement of the dismissed Pedro Castillo, of whom she was vice president.
For the director of the IEP, Patricia Zárate, this rejection derives from the discredit of Congress, since the arrival of Boluarte was seen as a move to remove as much as possible the specter of early elections.
If the current president had refused to take command, the position should have been filled by the president of Congress, José Williams, who would have been required by law to call elections immediately.
Everything got worse when Boluarte said at first that he was here to stay until 2026, in coexistence with the questioned Legislature. When he backed away from that stance, the country was already on fire.
The repression worsened the image. Boluarte, elected vice president in a left-wing formula and who is said to be identified with that thought, began to be seen by many as an expression of that right that was fiercely opposed to Castillo.