Self ‐​Coup in Peru: Why Castillo’s Attempt Failed So Rapidly

Daniel RaisbeckPeru ’s constitution came under threat the moment Pedro Castillo officially won Peru’s contentious presidential election in June of 2021. A formerly obscure teachers union leader who came to media prominence as the candidate for a Marxist ‐​Leninist party (Free Peru), Castillo had no intention of playing by the established rules of the Peruvian republic. Though certainly erratic — the country now has its seventh president in six years — Peru’s institutions had still managed to withstand a series of impeachment trials and other clashes between the executive and Congress. A series of high ‐​profile corruption scandals unleashed the strife. Amid the fallout, two‐​time former president Alan García committed suicide in 2019. Castillo, however, posed an institutional menace on an altogether different scale.To begin with, his party ’s program for the 2021 election included numerous measures that explicitly sought to violate the constitution’s unequivocal safeguards for private property, which it declares “inviolable.” The constitution also guarantees free enterprise, foreign investment, and press freedom. Castillo’s platform, on the other hand, set out an agenda of nationalizing the mining sector and other major industries, expropriating land, and getting rid of Peru’s successful private pension system, which, at the time, administered over USD $40 billion in citizens’ savings. Free Peru, which openly admir...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs