Posted on 07/31/2021 10:10:49 PM PDT by 11th_VA
Peru’s new president Pedro Castillo, 51, deserves credit for vowing to focus his government on improving the lives of the country’s poverty-stricken indigenous population. But his first steps in office raise fears that he will scare away investors, generate capital flight and — after a short-lived populist fiesta — create more poverty.
Castillo, a leftist former elementary school teacher who had never before held public office, assumed the presidency on July 28 after winning the runoff elections with a razor-thin 0.3 percent of the vote. He controls only 37 seats in the 130-member Congress.
Some hoped that Castillo’s minority in Congress would force him to pursue a more-moderate path than that advocated by his Marxist “Peru Libre” party. But that hasn’t happened.
Instead of appointing a moderate prime minister who could have helped build bridges with the opposition, Castillo has picked one of Peru’s most radical leftist politicians for that job.
The new prime minister, Guido Bellido, is under investigation for paying “homage” to a Shining Path terrorist group member in a 2017 Facebook posting. Bellido also defended the Cuban dictatorship after the brutal repression of thousands of peaceful demonstrators on the island on July 11, claiming in a July 19 television interview hat Cuba is a democratic country.
Peru’s daily La Republica, which has generally been kind to Castillo, criticized Bellido’s appointment in an editorial with the headline, “No, Mr. President.”
Likewise, Castillo appointed Héctor Béjar, 85, a former guerrilla leader and senior Perú Libre party official, as his foreign minister.
But what’s most troubling about Castillo’s first moves in office is his focus on convening an assembly to draft a new constitution. That’s exactly what late Venezuelan authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez did immediately after taking office in 1999, and what Chavez’s followers did…
(Excerpt) Read more at reportdoor.com ...
Another disaster, great. Hope he gets Covid.
I predict massive starvation in Peru’s future.
Castillo ran on changing the constitution, and using Peru’s vast mineral resources for “the people”, and not corporations.
I find his life story fascinating. He is socially conservative, and opposed to the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, or euthanasia and the “gender equality approach” in education.
He is economically opposed to monopolies, and oligopolies, and his upbringing as a member of the peasant class makes his 70/30 plan to retain profits from multinational corporations has merit, IMHO.
Since Keiko Fujimori was the presumed winner, and preferred candidate by the West (The Fujimoris remind me of Bill and Hil), I expect to hear nothing good about Castillo from the Press.
You thought the spaniards were bad...
Hat and all, perhaps in greater design than ignorance, Pedro Castillo appears to be nothing more an Augusto César Sandino wannabe.
Election of Castillo and rejection of Fujimori suggests Peru’s political bench is shallow. Question becomes, next time out the gate, who will be the best candidates available?
Somewhere, sometime even here, someone calls for a new constitution. This times it’s there and Castillo calls. Twenty years, family in Venezuela hailed Hugo as the “clean broom sweeps well”. Now some family are here, some are unable to leave and a failed bus driver is their president. Though amended seventeen times, and abused by too many, US are still on our first.
Communists are always “socially conservative” when they seize power. Prior to that, they support everything and anything that destabilizes the society they seek to overthrow.
Dunno if they'll beat Zimbabwe, but I'll warrant they will try.
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