Recently, on the 7th of December, Pedro Castillo former president of Peru attempted to give a self-coup d’état.
The Peruvian congress held a vote in which it was decided whether the congress would remove the president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, from office. To approve the impeachment, 87 of the 230 deputies of the Peruvian congress were needed, and although there was a risk that the votes would not be enough. It seemed that by the third vacancy vote, the votes would be obtained. Under this situation Pedro Castillo would have to face a justice system that had more and more evidence of his corruption scandals and in order to hold on to the power that was going to be taken away from him by the congress and not face a justice system that was stalking him for corruption scandals.
Pedro Castillo before the vote in the congress tried to do the following in his own words: “To create an exceptional government oriented to reestablish the Rule of Law and Democracy to which effect measures are dictated such as temporarily dissolving the congress of the republic, and to establish an exceptional emergency government, to summon in the shortest term elections for a new congress with constituent faculties to elaborate a new constitution in a term no longer than 9 months, and until the new congress of the republic is installed. The government will be governed by decree law, a curfew is decreed as of today, Wednesday, 7th of December of 2022, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. the following day, the justice system, the judiciary, the public ministry, the national board of justice, the constitutional court are declared in reorganization. All those in possession of illegal weapons will have to hand them over to the national police within 72 hours, whoever does not do so commits a crime of deprivation of liberty to be established in the respective decree law. The national police with the help of the armed forces will lead their efforts in the effective fight against crime, corruption and drug trafficking, for which purpose they will be provided with the necessary resources. We call on all the institutions of the civil association to support these decisions that will allow us to lead our country to its development without any discrimination”.
In this case we can observe a clear coup d’état attempt, since the Peruvian executive power without any competence to do so is dissolving the legislative power, and is taking the judicial power. That is to say it is concentrating all the power of the state in the sole hands of Pedro Castillo, thus becoming a tyrant since he also intended to rule this way until a new constitution is designed to his measure through the decree law, that is to say by his mere order and command.
Fortunately, nobody obeyed Pedro Castillo, because a few minutes after this coup d’état, practically his entire government resigned and announced that we were facing a coup d’état. At the same time, the congress accelerated the vacancy vote and ended up removing Pedro Castillo by 101 votes out of the 130 that make up the congress of the republic. The constitutional court also declared that these measures of Pedro Castillo undermined the constitutional order and that we were facing a coup d’état. And both the police and the armed forces issued a communiqué saying that Pedro Castillo had overstepped his authority and that they would not support him.
In barely an hour Pedro Castillo would go from tyrant to prisoner, because the Peruvian political institutions worked to contain the attempted coup d’état that Castillo tried to carry out, hence the absolute importance of having institutions that act as check and balances. If the legislative and judicial branches had been aligned with Castillo’s coup intentions, Pedro Castillo would now be a tyrant with absolute power over the state apparatus. Pedro Castillo has failed thanks to his incompetence not only in administering the country but also in the preparations for the coup, but nevertheless Peruvians should not relax and remain vigilant of the next steps of the current president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, as she is part of Peru Libre, the same party of Castillo, a party presided by Vladimir Cerron, who was the one who has continuously urged Pedro Castillo to stage a coup against the Peruvian constitution.
If Dina Boluarte is more skillful at pulling internal strings to undermine from within the institutions and the rule of law, the next coup attempt may not end in this farce in the eyes of the world, but could end with democracy itself in Peru, and for this not to happen we must be attentive to each of the movements that Dina Boluarte is going to give, because as Thomas Jefferson would say “the price of freedom, is eternal vigilance”.
This was a really interesting post! I didn’t know anything about the attempted coup before reading and now am aware of the main points. One of the things that strikes me as most interesting in the language used by Castillo in his attempt to declare the coup is how much it sounds language used in the US to defend institutions of government. I have recently been doing some reading on approaches to the ‘rule of law’ and seeing this makes it all seem much more real. The actions Castillo takes use the language of promotion of democracy and institutions to argue for the exact opposite. The point you made at the end of the piece regarding the new president being from the same party as Castillo really struck me. We’ll have to wait and see if it was a coup supported by the party or if it was Castillo acting alone. Hime being a lone actor is certainly better for the overall democratic system in Peru but also seems highly improbable.
I had never heard of this case in Peru before it is an incredible example of democratic resilience. I wish I knew more about the stability and functionality of Peru’s government. In the case study that I just wrote a similar situation occurred, but he prevailed to assume almost total power. But the situations are eerily identical with both the same ideas and dialogue to create autocracies, but with opposite outcomes. Democratic erosion through the guise of democracy promotion is becoming more and more frequent. I think this is particularly due to the slow nature of democratic legislation, especially in countries with severe economic issues, that have made slow but honest leadership less important than overall well being. This is what is happening in Tunisia’s democratic experiment. I am not familiar with the economic situation in Peru, but it seemed that Peru’s democracy held strong and immediately struck down this coup attempt. Which leads to question how and why did this happen? What make Peru’s democracy different than Tunisia’s? Obviously this question is rhetorical as that information could be found through research but the overall point that I am getting it is that it is important to think about every democracy, although being under the same label, is radically different.
When I saw this coup attempt in the news, my mind immediately went to this class, so I am glad that you decided to write about it! This was a very clear attempt at a coup but also a clear example of how to push back. You made a very good point about the thin barrier that sometimes stands between democracy and those who would try to erode it. In many situations, the fate of a democracy can come down to the decisions of just a few people. It has also been very interesting to see the resulting protests from those who would support Castillo. I think that support might have strong implications for the fate of Peru’s democracy.