00:00And in the context of Election Day in Peru, we have a special guest now, historian and political scientist Isaac
00:06Vigillo.
00:08Hello Isaac, welcome to From the South.
00:11Hello, hello. Good evening.
00:14How should we understand the depth of Peru's institutional crisis going into the April 12th election?
00:22Well, I am Peruvian and I just bought in England.
00:26And really, it's a nightmare because the paper is larger than a new, it's extremely big, it's this size, you
00:40know.
00:41We have 35 parties, we have five categories, and in addition, we have to tick boxes with different numbers.
00:48So today, I couldn't vote for the candidate that I wanted, because when I tried to vote for the candidate,
00:57the letter was so small, I couldn't read.
01:00And many people don't know what to do.
01:04It's extremely confusing.
01:06And I think one of the reasons why the Fujimoristas want to do that is because they want a lot
01:13of spoiled ballots, so many people against Fujimori could be lost in the elections.
01:23It's the most messy ballot you can ever imagine.
01:26And on the other hand, in Peru, we have the worst of the U.S. presidential system and the worst
01:36of the British parliamentarian system.
01:38Because we have a president, like in the United States, like in Venezuela, like in Latin America, like in France.
01:44Yes.
01:45But the president can be ousted by the Senate.
01:49But the president cannot close the Senate.
01:53On the other hand, we have, like in Britain, the first-past-the-post system.
02:01So in every department, if one party wins by only one single vote, he has the only regional senator from
02:12that department.
02:13So it will mean that the Fujimoristas, despite having a very few votes, they are going to control a lot
02:22of the parliament.
02:23We have something similar 10 years ago when the Fujimoristas have 20% of the votes and they achieve 60
02:32% of the parliament.
02:34So at this moment, I don't know which party is going to win, which party is going to go second,
02:44which is going to enter in the second round.
02:49And most likely, no party is going to achieve 10% of the votes in the senatorial elections.
02:56It's really a mess, really a mess.
03:00People are very, they are not very happy.
03:04We are going to have a lot of spoiled and blank votes in these elections.
03:09And now let's go deep into what does this repeated turnover of presidents tell us about the legitimacy of Peru's
03:16democratic institutions,
03:17something that you just mentioned now.
03:22Five years ago, I personally voted for Pedro Castillo as the first teacher and trade unionist president.
03:31He was the first and only Peruvian that achieved more than 8,800,000 votes.
03:39However, he couldn't rule the government.
03:43Every time the parliament tried to overthrow him, overthrow him, and on the 7th of September of 2022,
03:52less than two years, less than 20 months of government, he was removed without the right of defense himself,
04:02without any discussion, no parliament spoke, without the minimum quantity of votes required from impeachment,
04:13and he was put in jail before he was impeached.
04:19It is the most illegal and anti-constitutional impeachment in the history of Peru,
04:28and perhaps in the history of South America.
04:30And since then, we had three presidents, each of them with very few popular supports.
04:39We have Dina Boluarte, who killed 70 people.
04:43Then we have Jose Heri, which lasted very few months.
04:50And now we have Balcazar, who only achieved 6,000 votes to enter in the parliament.
04:58He was elected as a Marxist-Leninist, and now he is a far-right government, and it's very unpopular.
05:09So many people said in my country, okay, we vote for one president, for what?
05:15At the end, the Senate or the Congress is going to do whatever they want.
05:20So people are not very happy in my country.
05:23This is not, we don't have democracy in the country.
05:25The other thing, I will tell you another point.
05:30About eight years ago, we have a referendum.
05:34And 90% of the population, a lot, 90% said, we don't want the relation of any congressman, and
05:45we don't want two chambers.
05:48We don't want Senate, we don't have deputies.
05:50We want to have one single Congress.
05:53But suddenly, the current Congress changed everything.
05:58Now we have Senate, we have deputies, and everybody could be re-elected.
06:01So why we have this referendum?
06:05So the Congress, ruled by the Fujimoristas, can do whatever they want.
06:10It's a dictatorship.
06:12All the people that have been killed by Dina Boloarte, there is no justice.
06:18No justice at all.
06:20No justice.
06:22No human rights are valid.
06:24It's the most important independent prosecutors and judges have been expelled, and we have a judiciary completely controlled by the
06:39Fujimorista mafia.
06:40So we are having a sort of democracy, which is not.
06:45And finally, in Callao, which is in the center of Lima, is the port of Lima, the United States is
06:54building a $1 billion military base.
06:58And nobody is questioning that.
07:01Like, it is all right.
07:03So we are going to become the only country in South America where the United States have an extremely expensive
07:12military base in its own capital.
07:14And nobody is talking about that in these elections.
07:18So we are not having a real democracy now in Peru.
07:23Also, I want to highlight something that you mentioned.
07:26Peru is moving to a two-chamber legislature, and I wanted to ask you, what are the implications of restoring
07:31bicameralism after you mentioned yourself, after 90% of voters rejected it in the 2018 referendum?
07:40People don't like bicameralism, because what happened now?
07:44Before, the president had the power to remove parliament, to remove the Congress.
07:53If, for example, the Congress two times or three times removed the prime minister, the president had the right to
08:05remove the Congress.
08:07But now that has been abolished.
08:11The Senate cannot be removed.
08:18The citizens cannot remove their own senators or their own deputies.
08:25So they are like kings.
08:27They come with the saying that I'm going to be a left-winger.
08:31I'm going to do a breach.
08:33I'm going to do something.
08:34And when they become senators, they forget everything, and they started to steal and steal money.
08:40They lobbied for big companies.
08:44So, and now, whoever is president, the president is going to be better, because the Senate could oust the president
08:56if the Senate wants.
08:58So we have a terrible system where the Senate is going to become like a dictatorship.
09:06And so we don't have the right as citizens to remove our citizens, our senators, and the president doesn't have
09:16the right to remove the Senate.
09:18So it's a kind of dictatorship.
09:21And people are not happy at all about that, you know.
09:25But the law has been imposed, and the demonstration against that were not successful because they were repressed, and they
09:37end in blood, a lot of blood.
09:40And thank you very much, Isaac, for being here with us, for helping us as well, going into a deep
09:47analysis on what is happening today in Peru.
09:50Thank you very much.
10:08Thank you very much.
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