The relationships between Peru and Colombia going through difficult times after the decision of the Peruvian executive to withdraw his ambassador in Bogotá due to the repetitive declarations of President Gustavo Petro on the political and social situation of said country.
In a statement issued on Wednesday night, The Peruvian Foreign Ministry affirmed that the decision was made after the “continuous interventionist expressions” of President Petro which, they say, “persists in distorting reality by ignoring that on December 7, 2022, a coup d’état perpetrated by former President Pedro Castillo took place in Peru.”
The Executive assured that the declarations of the Colombian president have seriously deteriorated the “historic relationship of friendship, cooperation and mutual respect” between both nations, for which it was determined that diplomatic relations are formally at the level of charge d’affaires.
Why was the decision made and what does it imply? We tell you.
Background
The situation between Peru and Colombia has been full of tensions since last December, when then-President Pedro Castillo attempted a coup by dissolving Congress and trying to rule by decree. However, Castillo was arrested and is currently in pretrial detention in Lima accused of rebellion, collusion and influence peddling.
(You can read: Peru: three Castillo ministers will be investigated for self-coup)
Since then, President Petro has defended Castillo on multiple occasions. The first took place just one day after the attempted coup, when he wrote on his Twitter account that the former Peruvian president was cornered from day one and that he “allowed himself to be led to political and democratic suicide.”
In December, he also questioned the arrest of the former president and wrote: “We have a popularly elected president in South America unable to hold office and detained without a sentence from a criminal judge.”
Pedro Castillo for being a teacher in the Sierra and president of popular election was cornered from the first day. He did not achieve the mobilization of the people who elected him, he allowed himself to be led to political and democratic suicide
Hopefully Peru finds the path of dialogue in its entire society
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) December 8, 2022
The statement that caused the most problems with Peru came in February, when the Colombian president stated that the police in that country were marching like Nazis against their own people. A statement that earned him be declared persona non grata by the Congress of the Andean nation.
And this week, the straw that broke the camel’s back was his statement at the Ibero-American Summit, in Santo Domingo, in which he assured that Pedro Castillo should be present at the event and not imprisoned in a Lima jail. “We will not remove a president who should be here, (and who) is in pretrial detention, they removed him with a blow.”
The president received a strong response from the Peruvian foreign minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi: “If Pedro Castillo is not here, it is because he carried out a coup.”
The implications of the measure
After Petro’s series of statements, the Foreign Ministry communicated the decision to withdraw its ambassador -as it did with Mexico- and limit relations between the two countries to a charge d’affaires.
The decision was made official this Thursday through a supreme resolution published in the official newspaper El Peruano and signed by President Dina Boluarte and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana Cecilia Gervasi.
Said resolution recalls that the diplomat Félix Denegri was appointed Peruvian ambassador in Colombia on September 15, 2021 and assumed his duties on December 1 of that year.
Then, he adds that his functions will be “terminated” on a date that will be set by a ministerial resolution and that his credentials will be cancelled.
It will make things difficult in terms of migration and security issues at the regional level
In this regard, Mauricio Jaramillo, a professor at the Faculty of International Political and Urban Studies of the Universidad del Rosario, points out that the decision to limit the relationship between the two countries to a business manager means that Peru and Colombia will not address issues “beyond the commercial minimum.”
“Everything that is political cooperation is frozen. For the citizen, however, this will not have many effects, but it does imply a setback for Petro in his idea of a Latin American foreign policy ”, he points out.
Sebastián Fernández de Soto, Control Risks analyst for Peru, agrees that the decision It supposes a cooling in the relationship that will hinder interaction and work with one of the neighboring countries of the region.
“It will make it difficult for both countries to cooperate in many areas, such as in the midst of Petro’s reformulation of drug policy. It is very difficult to manage a regional drug policy without having a good relationship with the second largest cocaine-producing country in the world, Peru. It will also make things difficult on migration and security issues at the regional level, ”he indicates.
The retired ambassador Carlos Pareja summed it up to the newspaper El Comercio, from Peru, in the following sentence: “The dynamics of the bilateral relationship will be hindered.”
Despite this, the Control Risks analyst is emphatic that it is not correct to believe that Colombia and Peru can break definitive relations and points out that this option has not even been considered in the case of Mexico, despite the explosive statements by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo), who has even met with the Castillo family after granting them asylum in his country.
What is clear, according to Jaramillo, is that Peru’s decision means an indefinite suspension of diplomatic relations taking into account that “very surely until there is a change of government in Peru we will not have diplomatic relations”.
“It will be very difficult for Dina Boluarte or Petro to change their position,” he said.
Boluarte isolates himself from the international community
Analysts also agree that Boluarte’s recent decision does represent a major setback for his government and that the measure increasingly isolates its Executive in the region.
It should be remembered that, on February 25, Boluarte also announced the definitive withdrawal of the Peruvian ambassador in Mexico, alleging that the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Amlo) violated the principle of non-interference in internal affairs.
The diplomatic confrontation, moreover, has frozen the Pacific Alliance, the trade group made up of Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico, since President Amlo refuses to hand over the rotating presidency to Boluarte.
“Peru was already isolated with Pedro Castillo and since there was repression against the protesters it has been deepening (the isolation). Effectively today Peru is isolated, it has no regional participation and very surely like Dina Boluarte it is interim, until it summons a the new early elections for the states, it will not be a priority to have a relationship with her either,” says Jaramillo.
The departure of his ambassador in Colombia also comes at a critical moment for Boluarte within his country. This Tuesday, the Public Ministry of Peru announced that it will investigate the president and former president Pedro Castillo for the alleged prohibited financing of political organizations, money laundering and criminal organization for alleged illegal contributions in the 2021 electoral campaign.
Boluarte also has another investigation open in the prosecutor’s office for the alleged crime of “genocide” as a result of the repression to stop the protests that broke out asking for his resignation.
And this Thursday, Congress would debate the admission of a motion to remove the president that, however, experts believe that it will not prosper.
“The vacancy request is being promoted by the left-wing parties and the right-wing parties are not supporting it. I see it as very difficult for it to proceed in this government because the right has won an ally in the executive with President Boluarte and has no intention of to get Boluarte out,” says the Control Risks analyst.
Jaramillo mentions, for his part, that it is not convenient for Congress to remove the president at this time, since it would be a decision that would only generate greater instability.
“The departure of Boluarte and the arrival of José Williams Zapata, who is the president of Congress, will not favor governability, it will not favor the reinsertion of Peru in the regional circuits. It would only deepen the chaos, it would have effects on the Peruvian debt , and country risk evaluators and foreign investment may leave (Peru), “he concludes in this regard.
ANGIE NATALY RUIZ HURTADO
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME
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