RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Peru’s Congress, dominated by the right-wing opposition, began this Wednesday (26) a crucial session, in a polarized atmosphere, to decide whether or not to give a vote of confidence to the ministerial cabinet of the new leftist president Pedro Castillo.
The session was opened by the head of the unicameral Congress, opposition member Maria del Carmen Alva, who immediately gave the floor to the head of Castillo’s cabinet, Guido Bellido, who began to set out the plans of the government that took office a month ago.
“We have come to the hemicycle not only to request a vote of confidence […], but to [ask] that we put aside our differences to solve one of the most serious political, economic and health crises of the last decades,” said Bellido, a 41-year-old engineer and leftist legislator whose appointment to head the cabinet was widely questioned by the opposition.
Bellido, a native of the Andean region of Cusco – capital of the ancient Inca empire – began his presentation speaking in Quechua and Aymara, ancestral languages still spoken daily by five of the 33 million Peruvians in the Andean region.
This led Alva to interrupt him and ask him to speak in Spanish only so that all 124 legislators present could understand his message.
“This is a sign that even our country has not understood that there are profound peoples who have cultures, languages from different sectors,” said Bellido, who resumed his message speaking only in Spanish.
Congress has no translators for native languages, although the Constitution establishes that Peru is a multilingual country.
Bellido, who was not wearing a tie but a colorful Andean scarf, had one hour to deliver his message, before a long debate among legislators began.
Meanwhile, outside the Congress, dozens of demonstrators for and against the government were kept apart by the police to avoid clashes between them.
The confidence motion, which must be voted by Thursday night and requires 66 votes, is crucial for the new 19-member cabinet to remain in place. If it is denied, Castillo will have to appoint another prime minister to replace Bellido, and reshuffle the cabinet.
In this case, it would prolong the uncertainty that has existed in Peru for the last five months due to the electoral campaign – typified by the close presidential runoff of June 6 – and which has persisted due to controversies over the cabinet, which already cost the post of Foreign Minister Héctor Béjar.
Castillo’s rivals had expected the president to make more cabinet changes – apart from Béjar – before submitting to a vote of confidence, something the president rejected.