Its admission to debate in the plenary session is not guaranteed as this step requires 40% of votes in favor among the attending legislators.
Congressmen from three right-wing parties in Peru presented to Parliament on Thursday a request for the removal of leftist president Pedro Castillo, who has only been in power for four months, alleging “moral incapacity” to exercise his functions.
With 28 signatures, two more than those required to start the process before the plenary session of Congress, the motion for “vacancy” was presented by congressmen from the Avanza País, Fuerza Popular and Renovación Popular parties, representing a third of Parliament.
But his admission to debate in the plenary session is not guaranteed as this step requires 40% of votes in favor among the attending legislators. And to remove a president it takes 87 votes out of a total of 130 congressmen.
“Declare the permanent moral incapacity of the President of the Republic, citizen José Pedro Castillo Terrones, as established in paragraph 2 of Article 113 of the Political Constitution of Peru,” says the text of the motion that was disseminated by the press and social networks.
The vacancy request could be addressed next week in a plenary session of Congress, the press reported.
They ask to close the Congress
Castillo, for his part, said he felt “calm” after the presentation of the vacancy request in Parliament.
“I am not worried about political noises, because the people have chosen me, the mafia or the corrupt have not chosen me. That is why I owe myself to the people. I am calm, “said the president in the Andean city of Jauja (center), where he came to inaugurate social works.
In rejection of the impeachment proposal, dozens of militants of the ruling Peru Libre party marched with posters calling for “Close the Congress”, up to the front of the Parliament.
The vacancy proposal is promoted by Congresswoman Patricia Chirinos, from Avanza País, an organization that championed economist Hernando De Soto as a presidential candidate in this year’s elections.
Peru’s unicameral Parliament is dominated by a right-wing opposition, while Peru Libre (Marxist) is the first minority with 37 votes.
The opposition leader and former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori had announced last Friday that her party, Fuerza Popular, second bench in Congress (24 votes), will support the impeachment request.
“At Fuerza Popular we believe that this government has been showing a permanent inability to lead the country,” Fujimori had said then on Twitter.
The far-right Renovación Popular also supports the dismissal, and has called a march in support of the initiative this Saturday.
The possible dismissal of Castillo has been in the air since the day after his election, when right-wing parties denounced fraud despite the endorsement of the results by electoral authorities and observers from the OAS and the European Union.
Castillo, who assumed the Presidency on July 28 and whose term ends in July 2026, is the subject of criticism that accuses him of lack of direction and points to his constant ministerial crises. In less than 120 days in office, he has changed a dozen ministers and faces divisions in the coalition that backs him.
Disapproval of the president reached 57%, according to an Ipsos poll released on November 14.
In November 2020, President Martín Vizcarra was stripped of power in an express process in Congress. And in March 2018, Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki resigned from the presidency on the eve of a second impeachment attempt. (I)
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