The Peruvian Congress granted a vote of confidence to the Council of Ministers headed by the recently appointed Prime Minister, Alberto Otároladuring a plenary session marked by the deaths that occurred during the massive protests that are taking place in the country against the Government of Dina Boluarte.
With 73 votes in favor, 42 against and six abstentions, the chamber gave its vote of confidence to the new cabinet this Wednesday morning, which debated the general policy that the Government will carry out and the main measures that the administration will require.
At the start of the session, the left-wing benches demanded the Government for the death of 18 people in the protests in the southern Department of Puno between Monday and Tuesdayone of the most violent days since the beginning of the demonstrations after the dismissal of President Pedro Castillo on December 7th.
Ms @DinaErcilia, I QUIT! There are already more than 30 Peruvians murdered, victims of excessive violence and the brutal repression that their government has been exercising. If you have any respect for the memory of the deceased and their loved ones, resign along with your entire cabinet.
[1/2]
— Sigrid Bazan (@sigridbazan) January 9, 2023
Some congressmen who carried signs against the government yelled at Otárola “murderer”, which led to the suspension of the session momentarily.
Cambio Democrático congresswoman Sigrid Bazán criticized her colleagues for “justifying the deaths of compatriots, helping a man accused of rape and giving confidence to a cabinet stained with blood.”
“This misfortune will go down in history!” the legislator said on Twitter.
The leader of the Peru Libre party, Vladimir Cerrón, also criticized the fact that Congress gave its confidence to the “cabinet of death.”
“As the song says: That those few do not forget it easily!”, he added, citing the popular creation of León Gieco, “I only ask God.”
At the beginning of the session, the leftist benches demanded the Government for the death of 18 people in the protests in the southern Department of Puno
The trust was voted on hours before the arrival in Lima of a delegation from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that will visit some Peruvian cities to meet, discuss and receive information from public authorities, civil society organizations and other actors and then publish their conclusions and recommendations.
The delegation, which will be in the country until Friday, will be led by the first vice president of the IACHR and Rapporteur for Peru, Stuardo Ralón, and made up of Joel Hernández; with the support of the Deputy Executive Secretary for Monitoring, Technical Cooperation and Training, María Claudia Pulido; the special rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Pedro Vaca; and technical team of the Executive Secretariat.
protests in the country
Peru has experienced a wave of protests since last December 7, when Boluarte succeeded President Pedro Castillo, who was dismissed by Congress hours after he announced the dissolution of Parliament and the establishment of an emergency government with the suppression of constitutional guarantees.
Those protests, which had already left nearly 30 dead before the end of the year, had their most intense day on Monday in Juliaca and other areas of Puno, where 18 people died.
Amnesty International joined the UN and warned in a statement that “the high number of deaths” and “the seriousness of the events” deserve a rendering of stories at the “highest level”according to a statement from the NGO signed by its director for the Americas, Erika Guevara Rosas, who stressed that the “first step” to get out of the crisis is to put an end to the repression.
“The state repression against demonstrators and the loss of human life is exacerbating the crisis (…) the people should not pay the cost of the political crisis that the country is going through,” stressed, for her part, the person in charge of the NGO in Peru, Marina Navarro.
AI also asked to examine the work of the security forces at all hierarchical levels and questioned the state of emergency decreed almost a month ago.
