After a bungled coup attempt, Peru’s president falls
Pedro Castillo tried to shut down Congress. Instead, he was impeached
In Marx’s hoary phrase, history repeats itself as farce. In 1992 Alberto Fujimori, an elected president, sent tanks to shut down Peru’s Congress and governed as an autocrat for the following eight years. Three decades later Pedro Castillo, the bumbling occupant of the job since July 2021, tried to do the same. On December 7th he announced that he would close Congress, convene a new one with powers to write a new constitution, and “reorganise” the judiciary and the prosecutor’s office. The effort collapsed within hours.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Castillo the brief”
From the December 10th 2022 edition
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