After the announcement this Wednesday of the then president, Pedro Castillo, that he would dissolve Congress and decree an emergency government in Peru, the population turned to their mobile phones and the radio awaiting immediate reactions. At that time, no one knew the direction the country could take. In the San Borja district, an hour after the presidential bell, people feared possible mobilizations for and against Lima. What had already been considered a coup by the party that supported Castillo, did not have an accurate trajectory. On the street, before Congress was in session to vacate the president, citizens were awaiting the reaction of the armed forces.
Eduardo Reynoso, a 28-year-old administrator, flatly rejected Castillo’s claims. “It is a coup, it is unconstitutional and I am against it: now we have to wait and see what the military say. The most likely thing is that there will be general elections because Congress does not represent anyone and is not interested in the common good, ”he commented in this middle-class district of San Borja.
In the center of Lima, since six in the morning the avenues that lead to Congress and the Government Palace were full of billboards, in anticipation of demonstrations for and against the presidential dismissal that was announced for the debate this afternoon in the plenary session of Congress. It was going to be discussed at three, but they brought it forward due to the self-coup. Some citizens related to the president were congregating on Abancay avenue, near Parliament, to protest against the vacancy, as this motion of no confidence is known. The police officers had the order to disperse them. The events, as they were unfolding, soon had their echo in the markets: the exchange rate for the dollar was at 3.83 soles on Tuesday and after the self-coup it rose slightly, to 3.90. The change baffles Peruvians when it exceeds four soles per dollar.
The waves immediately reached all areas of the country. When Castillo announced the closure of the Legislative Chamber, the delivery of the National Literature Award was taking place at the National Theater and the attendees were alerted on their cell phones; all were gossip and uncertainties about the unexpected news. At the end of the ceremony, Karina Pacheco, winner of the Novel, commented to EL PAÍS: “Only the advance of the general elections could give stability to democracy in the face of a government and a Congress that have been delegitimized day by day. We have had that experience of an authoritarian government 30 years ago”.
The writer and historian José Carlos Agüero added: “In this time, people have distanced themselves so much from politics that representativeness has become almost zero. The good thing about this is that Peru continues to walk because there are dynamics that can continue outside of these absurd confrontations (of Congress and the Executive). The downside is that there are some public administration decisions that must be taken and if they are not taken we are going to screw ourselves: one of them is the food crisis, inflation, avian flu… Everyone does something in the other countries, and not in Peru”, said Agüero, one of the main intellectuals of the Andean country.
Minutes later, when citizens were still evaluating the risk of an announcement like the one received, the Peruvian National Police arrested President Castillo.
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