This article first appeared in El Confidencial on October 6, 2021.
Peru’s president, Pedro Castillo, announced Wednesday that he has accepted the resignation of his prime minister, Guido Bellido and that in the coming hours he will swear in a new ministerial cabinet.
“I have decided to make some decisions in favor of governability”, said Castillo in a brief televised message in which he confirmed the rumors of Bellido’s departure, whose permanence in office was questioned by the political opposition and a large part of the citizenship.
Since he took office last July 28, Bellido maintained a constant struggle with the opposition political forces, which dominate the Congress, and consider him a radical leftist politician who generated “instability” in the country. aís.
In this sense, the President added that “it is time to put Peru above all ideology and partisan positions” and that “the balance of powers is the bridge between the rule of law and democracy”.
Castillo said he thanked Castillo “for his services rendered” and that the new prime minister and his cabinet will be sworn in at 20:00 local time (01:00 GMT on Thursday). Local media assure that the ruler has offered the presidency of the Council of Ministers to Mirtha Vásquez, a moderate leftist politician who presided over the previous Congress.
During his message, the President assured that since he assumed the Government he is “working hard to comply with all the commitments” he assumed during his electoral campaign and at the beginning of his mandate.
In this sense, he ratified “Peru’s commitment to private investment, stressing the need for it to operate without corruption, with social responsibility, prioritizing national productive diversification”. “In my commitment to address as a priority the major problems of the country, such as health, hunger, and poverty,” he said.
Castillo also said that the Executive and the Congress of his country must “seek tranquility and cohesion of the Government”, so that the constitutional prerogatives of the question of confidence, such as the interpellation and censure of ministers, “should not be used to create political instability”.
He alluded, in this way, to the threat Bellido had made to present a question of confidence if the Congress tried to censure the Minister of Labor, Iber Maraví, who last week was questioned by the parliamentary plenary due to journalistic allegations that in his youth he had links with the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path).
After Bellido’s departure, local media reported that the ruler will make changes in ministerial portfolios held by representatives of the Peru Libre party, which, if implemented, could imply a rupture with that group, also highly criticized in his country for its radical left-wing positions.
