Peru protests: Castillo orders, rescinds curfew – The Washington Post
The move was widely criticized as unconstitutional, abusive, disproportionate and politically suicidal. It hit the poor, many of whom live hand to mouth, particularly hard. It soon ended in farce: The inexperienced president, meeting with enraged lawmakers, announced he was suspending the measure but then failed to sign the necessary decree, just as demonstrators, this time waving red-and-white Peruvian flags, gathered in downtown Lima for the first time.
“The government has not only betrayed its promises of change but now repeats the right’s ‘conflict resolution’ method,” tweeted New Peru party leader Verónika Mendoza, an erstwhile Castillo ally. “Ignore those who mobilize with legitimate discontent over the economic and political situation, repress, criminalize and restrict rights.”
At least five people were reported killed in clashes that continued Wednesday; two more were reported to have been partially blinded by rubber bullets fired by police. The hub of the unrest was the central region of Junín, where a mob had stoned the home of former governor Vladimir Cerrón, a mentor to Castillo and the founder of his Marxist-Leninist party Free Peru.
Compounding the authoritarian symbolism, the lockdown came on the anniversary of disgraced former president Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 “self-coup,” when he closed Congress and the courts, supposedly to better confront the Maoist insurgents of the Shining Path.
Two of the president’s nephews and his former presidential secretary, Bruno Pacheco, are on the run from prosecutors who want to question them about influence peddling at the heart of the Castillo administration. Pacheco, whose office was next door to the president’s, was found with $20,000 hidden in his office bathroom. He has since given three different explanations for the cash, claiming at one point that it was his savings and at another that the money was to pay his lawyer.
The recently impeached health minister, Hernán Condori, as a doctor had hawked a product known as “clustered water” — essentially flavored water — as a supposed anti-aging treatment, at $80 per 100-milliliter bottle. At his inauguration, he lied flagrantly, claiming the product had been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its Peruvian counterpart, Digemid.
One of them is Ed Malaga-Trillo, a neuroscientist and congressman from the small, moderate Purple Party. He voted against Castillo last week — reluctantly, he said — in response to what he sees as the president’s dismantling of the fragile gains made by Peruvian institutions since the resumption of democracy in 2000.
A growing number of Peruvians want new elections. But that’s unlikely to solve the problem, political scientist Paula Tavara warns. The problems with Peruvian politics are structural, she says, including the often corrupt interests that control many of the existing parties and the high barriers to registering new parties — including a requirement that they have nearly 25,000 members before they can participate in elections.