Mauricio Mulder He has been a congressman in four terms, he is president of the Political Commission of the APRA and, unlike other former parliamentarians, he aspires to a seat in the Chamber of Deputies and not in the Senate of a bicameral Parliament that he does not believe will be better than the current one.
He joined the presidential ticket with Jorge del Castillo with whom he has been in confrontation, why?
Because we are from the same party and, indeed, we have had differences, but parties are for discussions and these can sometimes be heated. In the end the result has been positive, it has shown that the game is above everything and not our personal appetites.
A new face has emerged, that of Enrique Valderrama. Are you close to him?
I don’t know him. I learned of his name when he accused me of having removed 11,000 members from the party, something that the National Election Jury said did not happen, but he had the audacity to mention me to have a little, I don’t know, popularity. There has been an interesting vote for the Chamber of Deputies, I am also going there, that is politics, we move forward.
Can he have the leadership of Alan García? Do you think you will bring APRA back into government?
I can’t make a comparison because I have known Alan since he was young and we have worked a lot on running an electoral campaign and building a party; On the other hand, I do not know this young companion; I prefer that this topic fall under its own weight.
How did you see the support of Alan García’s son, Federico Danton, for the list headed by Javier Velásquez and included by Carla García?
I understand that he is something like 22 or 23 years old.
He’s 20…
You can’t say anything. It has nothing to do with politics yet, it cannot enter. When it’s his turn he’ll come in, obviously. I didn’t see it, but hey, it seems good to me. Everyone has the right to show their preferences, right?
How do you see the electoral contest? Another historic party like Apra, Acción Popular, is not having a good time.
To Acción Popular, and to us and other parties, what has become a formula of entryism has happened to us. That is to say, it is easy to be a member of a party (…), you go to party
Have matches become businesses?
That’s how it is. The vast majority of those parties that are made only for each electoral process, do not have a history; They are maneuvers carried out by people who have few scruples and they get into the parties, they remove the leaders because they have money, they buy the people and take the party. That is what has happened with Acción Popular, it is what they have wanted to happen with us, and it is one of the things that the JNE should pay attention to and not be saying: “Ah, no, you cannot be a candidate if you have not signed a piece of paper”; that is, bureaucracy.
Have the parties become a market for seats?
That’s how it is, that’s how it is, and not now, already in the previous processes, and the parties that have ideology and internal life are cornered (…). If one actually starts to say how many parties with permanent life there are, there are two or three of us, nothing more, the rest dissolve the day the elections end.
There are others, like Podemos, that are not dissolved, but are used for personal interests, or like the Alliance for Progress that becomes a shadow partner of the government.
These are people who have a lot of money and with the party they create, in the case of (José) Luna, of (César) Acuña, it is evident that they use that to have more power; They are not interested in ideology, thought, development, only having spaces of power and with that putting in ministers and even president of the republic because isn’t the current one also from that side?
Has that contributed to the fact that we do not have clear leadership on the right and the left?
Exactly, it is the result of having left the parties adrift and letting the bureaucrats make the decisions, (…) now it turns out that the State tells you if you can or cannot, that is why our democracy continues to be a stupid democracy; It goes here, there, but it doesn’t stick.
How did we end up with four former presidents behind bars?
That is because they have no political experience and created parties to help them reach power. They have no responsibility to account to their bases. (…) (The parties) are businesses, of course they are businesses; They dedicate themselves to that, nothing more.
85% of the population identifies Congress as the most corrupt institution. Why do you want to go back there?
(Smiles) (Congress) is a sewer because we have let that sewer be the one that represents the entire country. And why? Because what a party is, the debate, the underlying issues have been distorted…
Do you think the next Congress is going to be better or worse than the current one?
I don’t see any reason why I can say it’s going to be better. Let’s see, what’s new? Anyone bringing a project or something different? I don’t see any of that, and I think it’s going to be the same. Congress cannot be anything other than a Peruvian government. And what are we Peruvians like? Well, then, they voted in favor of Castillo, others for Vizcarra; If you vote for that type of person, don’t complain, because you are voting for a person known to be choro and you are voting for him. We Peruvians do not take responsibility for our mistakes, and that is what we need.
