Peru’s far-Left president arrested after attempt to dissolve congress

Pedro Castillo, Peru’s far-Left president, has been arrested over alleged corruption, hours after claiming to have dissolved congress in a desperate attempt to avoid jail.

Politicians had been due to debate firing Mr Castillo on Wednesday evening but then voted to impeach him after the president gave a surprise address to the nation, saying he was shuttering congress and would rule by decree until he convened a constituent assembly.

"This intolerable situation cannot continue," Mr Castillo said, announcing he was "temporarily dissolving congress... and installing an exceptional emergency government".

Dina Boluarte, the country's vice president, wrote on Twitter that Mr Castillo's move was a "coup d'état that aggravates the political and institutional crisis" in the country.

"Today, there has been a 20th century-style coup. It is a coup destined to fail, Peru wants to live in a democracy. This coup d'état has no legal basis," Francisco Morales, the president of the Constitutional Court, told the RPP radio station.

The attempt to dissolve congress was the final straw even for the president's own party, the Marxist-Leninist Free Peru. Many of its politicians were among those who voted to oust the president, a 53-year-old former rural teacher and wildcat strike leader.

The impeachment motion was approved with 101 votes out of a total of 130, in a session broadcast live on television.

Mr Castillo, who will be succeeded by Ms Boluarte, was arrested on Wednesday. He had reportedly tried to flee to the Mexican embassy in Lima.

Andres Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s leftist president, has been one of Mr Castillo’s few international allies and recently offered to travel to Peru when lawmakers there refused to authorise the president to leave the Andean nation to attend a summit in Mexico City.

Prosecutors are investigating Mr Castillo for multiple incidents of alleged corruption, including allegedly taking bribes and selling state jobs. In October, they filed a 376-page complaint against him, based on an extensive evidentiary trail and the testimony of dozens of witnesses.

The crisis followed weeks of rising tensions between Mr Castillo and congress, which is dominated by several hard-Right parties.

On the campaign trail, Mr Castillo raised expectations among Peru’s poor, especially in remote communities in the Andes and Amazon, with grandiose promises to improve their lives.

But once in power, he all but ignored the country’s most marginalised citizens and his approval quickly plummeted to below 20 per cent at one point.

The president was accused of ignoring a growing food crisis, with half of Peruvians suffering food insecurity, twice the pre-pandemic level, thanks to inflation and a lack of fertilizer triggered by the Ukraine conflict.

Mr Castillo's announcement came more than 30 years after then-president Alberto Fujimori suspended the constitution and dissolved congress in April 1992.

Impeachment proceedings are relatively common in Peru because its constitution allows one to be brought against a president based on the more subjective premise of political rather than legal wrongdoing.

It has created much political instability. In November 2020, Peru had three presidents within one week.