Peru: Boluarte proposes to Congress to advance general elections

The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, announced this Monday, minutes after midnight, that will send to Congress a bill to advance the general elections to April 2024a claim from the protesters who have taken to the streets in the last two days in protests in which two people have died.

“I have decided to take the initiative to reach an agreement with Congress to advance the general elections to April 2024. In the next few days I will submit to Congress a bill to advance the elections,” Boluarte said in a speech.

Likewise, The Peruvian Congress approved a resolution authorizing the lifting of a special jurisdiction for former President Castillowhich opens the way for the Prosecutor’s Office to extend preventive detention for rebellion.

The Peruvian president took office last Wednesday to replace Pedro Castillo, dismissed by Congress after he ordered the dissolution of Parliament, announced the formation of an emergency executive, which was to govern by decree, convene a constituent assembly and reorganize the justice system.

In this sense, He said that he made the decision to advance the elections and not finish his term in July 2026, as initially planned, by interpreting “in the broadest way the will of the citizenry and, consequently, with the responsibility that the exercise” of the Government implies.

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The leftist lawyer Dina Boluarte was sworn in before the plenary session of Congress as the first female president in the history of Peru.

In the period of the current time until the date of the early general elections

Boluarte clarified that the approval of this law implies constitutional reforms “that should be approved for the most expeditious procedure.”

“In the period from now until the date of holding the early general elections, my government will also promote the agreement in the Congress of the Republic of a law to reform the political system that allows (…) to have a more efficient, transparent and participatory democratic system of government,” he said.With this reform, he hopes that “all the practice of corruption and with political parties legitimized by citizen participation” will be left out.

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“I call on all the political forces of the country, of the regions and provinces, the authorities, civil society and the Peruvian people to participate in this process so that a wave of democratic will and national responsibility guides and guides us, to establish the legal, institutional and democratic life bases of a united, free and socially just Peru,” he concluded.

Former President Castillo, without special immunity

While the future of Peru is being decided, the future of Pedro Castillo is also being decided. The Peruvian Congress approved in the early hours of this Monday a resolution that authorizes the lifting of a special jurisdiction to former President Pedro Castillo that will avoid having to go through a political trial -a process in which the immunity of officials is lifted-, which opens the way for the Prosecutor’s Office to extend preventive detention for rebellion.

The resolution, approved by 67 votes in favor and 45 againstproposed lifting Castillo’s prerogative of political impeachment and giving rise to a criminal case, given that the ousted ex-president is in preventive detention for flagrante delicto for seven days, which expires next Wednesday.

In a very harsh extraordinary plenary session, in which even a parliamentarian defending Castillo attacked a detractor of the ex-presidentthe Legislature put up for debate the official letter of the Public Ministry in which it reported on the preliminary proceedings against Castillo, the former president of the Council of Ministers Betssy Chávez and the former Minister of the Interior Willy Huerta.

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Pedro Castillo, if found guilty, could face a sentence of up to 20 years

Congresswoman Adriana Tudela, from the right-wing Avanza País party, asked the plenary to authorize the board of directors to propose a bill that authorizes the lifting of Castillo’s jurisdiction, given that, in her opinion, “he threatened to destroy the rule of law “by proposing a self-coup.

With this resolution, the preliminary hearing is eliminated, which is a political-legal procedure through which the immunity of senior officials is lifted for the alleged commission of crimes of functionso that it is the ordinary judiciary that establishes the criminal responsibility of the accused officials.

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The legislative measure was approved at a time when the ex-president’s defense has filed several amparo appeals against Castillo’s detention, while The Mexican government has reported that it has received an asylum application by the former ruler.

Legislators from Peru Libre, the Marxist-Leninist party for which Castillo became president of the Republic in 2021, and other related political groups have questioned the removal and detention of the former president, some of whom They have indicated that he is politically persecuted and that the current president, Dina Boluarte, must resign from office for these events.

Boluarte announced at dawn this Monday that he will propose to Congress the advancement of general elections for 2024in view of the protests and social mobilizations that have worsened in recent hours, with the balance of two deaths and dozens of injuries, demanding the closure of Congress and the call for a new electoral process.

EFE