The President of Peru, Dina Boluarte, has not ruled out that the early elections called for 2024 could be held a year earlier and has announced that she will talk to Congress to try to «shorten the deadlines», while protests continue throughout the country in support of former President Pedro Castillo.
Boluarte has explained that he needs to coordinate with Congress to announce the call for elections before he can set a date, so he is already talking to the constitutional commission of the House to see to what extent it is possible to shorten the deadlines.
«This government will be a transitional government to call for calm, dialogue and work together», said Boluarte, who is in her first week as the first president in the history of Peru after being sworn in due to the arrest and indictment of Castillo for an alleged crime of rebellion, which will keep him in prison until Wednesday.
Some sectors of the country have urged Boluarte to move forward as soon as possible the call for elections due to the umpteenth political crisis facing the country, with strong mobilizations and protests that have already left six dead and the announcement to take the Armed Forces to the streets.
«We are in a political crisis and we understand that action has to be taken quickly,» said Luis Villanueva, president of the CGTP, Peru’s main trade union, after meeting this Tuesday at the National Palace with Boluarte, whom he asked to step forward because 2024 «is too late.»
The main challenge is to see how to cut those deadlines. According to the law, elections are called 270 days in advance. Among the alternatives is to bring forward the next legislature to January 2023 in order to ratify, in a second vote, the constitutional reform to call these long-awaited elections.
Meanwhile, the protests continue and will have a new episode this Wednesday after former President Castillo has called his followers to go to meet him when he leaves the detention center in Lima, where he has been held since a week ago when he was arrested after unsuccessfully trying to take refuge in the Mexican Embassy after announcing the dissolution of the Congress.
However, Castillo could be sent back to prison if the judicial authorities approve the demands of the Prosecutor’s Office, which has requested this time up to 18 months in prison for him while the investigation is being carried out.
