Eduardo Salhuana He began his days as President of Congress with a calm that contrasts with the accumulation of demands, questions and claims that must be faced, in addition to the citizen discredit to the entity that he is in charge of.
Born in Cusco but resident in Mother of God and elected legislator for that region, marks a continuity in the presidency of the Legislative Branch: Like his predecessor, Alejandro Soto, he is member of the Alliance for Progress (APP)questioned but favored by the coalition’s swaying that controls Parliament without addressing the demands of the population that they consider contrary to their particular interests.
Salhuana’s persistence has served to elevate him to this power of the State, even though he carries the weight of his links with illegal miners and must face the hot potatoes left by the Soto administration, such as the approval of the generous lifetime pension to former dictator Alberto Fujimori.
Salhuana agrees to give turns that lead him to reinvent himself. His career is evidence of this: Deputy of the United Left From 1990 to 1992, when he was removed from office by Fujimori’s coup, he reappeared as a candidate and congressman of Andean Renaissancethe indigenous party of Ciro Gálvez; was changed to Peru Possible Between 2001 and 2006, it was Minister of Justice Alejandro Toledo and candidate for his party for legislator and governor of Madre de Dios to finally fall into Cesar Acuña’s APP.
That is to say, Salhuana walked a path from leftist to pragmatic. Its beginning on the left was preceded by the student political activity when he was a law student at the San Antonio Abad University of Cusco and the union when he worked at Banco Agraria and founded the Banking Federation of Peru, before running for deputy.
In the nineties, after the coup by Fujimori that removed him from Congress, he practiced law and was judge in his region. He then unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Tambopata, Madre de Dios province, with a local political group and collaborated with the Democratic Foruma civil initiative that sought a legitimate solution to the autocracy of Fujimorism.
In Parliament, as a Peru possibilist, he was spokesman for this bench and solicitous defender of the Toledo governmentHe became Minister of Justice with the idea of coordinating better with the congressmen in the face of versions that the opposition at that time was aiming for a vacancy against Toledo.
At the end of his Toledo term, he ran for re-election without success and began to get into legal trouble with a child support sentence by a lawsuit filed by his ex-wife.
With illegal mining
With Peru Posible, Salhuana He tried to return to Congress three times and to be regional governor once. but he did not succeed. Meanwhile, advised the Madre de Dios Mining Federation and went General Manager of the Regional Government mother of God, who headed Luis Otsukaquestioned for being considered a political operator for illegal gold extractors.
It continued to get complicated. With Otsuka, he was denounced for Alleged collection of fees from illegal miners so that the Armed Forces do not carry out interdiction in the camps, according to the website Ojo Público. In total, there are three investigations in the Prosecutor’s Office, a trial for alleged corruption and an accusation of embezzlementin addition to not declaring three children he has with different women, as revealed by the weekly Hildebrandt en sus trece.
After returning to Congress with APP, he has presented Bills in favor of illegal miningUntil shortly before taking office, he defended a miner and then the latter was represented by his parliamentary advisor, as Latina revealed.
It is understandable that his rise in the Legislature has alarmed many, except the dominant coalition of this power.
They don’t care about criticism
Although Eduardo Salhuana does not have the strident, histrionic and unruly profile of Alejandro SotoBoth are questioned. However, given Soto’s lack of attention to the press, the new president of Congress marks a nuance by assuring that he will open the doors to them.
The lawyer Ana Leyva, coordinator in the organization Cooperationwarns that Salhuana has chosen to favor the interests of these groups so that they continue to operate without problems. “It has been his main agenda. He has promoted favoring the interests of these groups. That he is elected president of Congress shows that Most parliamentarians no longer care and are focused on personal interests“, says.
The political scientist Alejandro Boyco highlights the continuity in Salhuana’s rise to the presidency of Congress. “APP remains in the lead and the dominant coalition remains almost intact in the Board of Directors. This continuity shows strengthening of this coalition. They have been heavily criticized for their appointments and they do not care. This shows a deepening of their ability to govern without being accountable or taking into account citizen criticism,” he notes.
