Peru engulfs presidents.
Pedro Castillo was the last to fall, but he shares with his most recent predecessors the short time he lasted in office.
Her successor, the recently sworn Dina Boluarte, becomes the first female president in the history of Peru, but also the sixth head of the Peruvian State since 2018 (Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Martín Vizcarra, Manuel Merino, Francisco Sagasti, Pedro Castillo and Dina Boluarte).
Precariousness It is such that many Peruvians have become accustomed to living outside of politics and its permanent turbulence.
What makes Peru so ungovernable?
Permanent tension with Congress
The constant has been repeated in the last we go years The permanent struggle between Congress and the president ends with the defeat of the latter, who ends up leaving power.
Castillo was the last to suffer it in his own flesh.
In an apparent attempt to stop the vote on the vacancy motion against him in Congress, he surprisingly announced the dissolution of Parliament and the creation of an emergency government.
But a few hours later, doing Ignoring the presidential announcement, the congressmen met and decreed the vacancy of the president, who was left in the hands of the Police and the Prosecutor’s Office, accused of rebellion.
The situation arises from the Political Constitution of Peru, approved in 2000, which establishes that the presidency of the Republic remains vacant due to “temporary or permanent incapacity of the president, declared by Congress” .
This has opened the the door for the vacancy to become a kind of sword of Damocles that permanently hangs over the head of the president and that can fall on him as soon as the Congress meets 90 votes required.
It is what has happened now to Castillo, to Vizcarra in 1993 and when Alberto Fujimori fled to Japan in 1993 and Congress had to declare his dismissal.
This constitutional peculiarity explains why Peruvian presidents have a much weaker position.
The successive congresses have realized that the vacancy procedure gives them the possibility of ending the president and have not hesitated to use it.
To the point that there are experts who point out that the original meaning of the vacancy has been distorted.
According to what Omar Cairo, professor of Constitutional Law at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, told BBC Mundo, “Peru is the only country in the world that has the institution of vacancy due to moral incapacity. But the moral incapacity, which is in the Peruvian constitutions since 1992, in the 19th century alluded to the president’s mental incapacity”.
“Now every time congressmen consider that the president is immoral, they can remove him at their discretion with only the strength of the votes, and that immoral term is something very gassy today”.
And to this is added the growing fragmentation experienced by the Peruvian political forces in recent years.
Cairo explains that “Parliament is not made up of solid parliamentary blocs, but a multitude of small groups that respond more to individual interests than to programs or ideologies, and that makes it very difficult for presidents to obtain support in Congress”.
In this way, the Peruvian is configured as a rarity on the map of Latin American political systems, where presidential regimes predominate.
“Peru is not a parliamentary regime like the British or Spanish, in which the Prime Minister or the President of the Government is elected by the deputies in Parliament, but rather the president is directly elected by the people’s votes in the elections, but the existence of the vacancy has allowed a discretionary mechanism to depose the president that does not exist in other countries in our region.”
The government option
However , the Peruvian president retains some powers that do not leave him completely at the mercy of Congress and also help explain why the Executive and the Legislative branch live in permanent tension in Peru.
According to the Magna Carta , the president can dissolve Congress if he twice denies confidence in the Executive.
Castillo’s last attempt to stay in power went through announcing the dissolution of the Congress, among other exceptional measures considered by the majority of analysts and by the Prosecutor’s Office as unconstitutional and that led him to be arrested, accused of rebellion and other crimes.
Thus he emulated Alberto Fujimori, former president reviled by Castillo and many of his followers who in 1839 ordered the closure of Congress.
Last November, Castillo assured that Congress had denied him confidence due to his position contrary to a law on referendums in the country.
A second refusal would have allowed him to dissolve the Chamber.
But Congress denied that even that supposed first denial of confidence had occurred and appealed to the Constitutional Court, which provisionally agreed with it.
It was the last skirmish between Congress and Castillo before the final battle that ended this Wednesday with him out of the Presidency.
And although he has and a new president, there are reasons to think that it will not be the last.
What can happen between Dina Boluarte and Congress
The now new vice president, Dina Boluarte, inaugurated her term calling for a “truce” in Congress and to build “a government of national unity”.
But, although today the majority of congressmen have voted to overthrow Castillo and make her the new head of state, it is not clear that she will have the necessary support to form a stable government.
Boluarte does not have a bench that supports her in the Legislature.
For Cairo, her presidency runs the risk of being marked by the same uncertainty that its predecessors suffered. “With the vacancy framed in as vague terms as she currently is, it’s likely that she will suffer the same fate.”
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download the new version of our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.