Disapproval of Peru’s president rises to 50% due to questioned ministers

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – According to a survey by Datum International released on Thursday, disapproval against Peruvian President Pedro Castillo’s administration rose to 50% in October due to the rejection of at least two cabinet members.

Disapproval against Castillo rose four percentage points compared to September, and his approval dropped to 40%, two points less than the previous month.

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The Peruvian president removed former Prime Minister Guido Bellido and some former ministers close to the rigid wing of the Marxist party Peru Libre, which led him to the presidency but appointed new members to maintain the political tension against the Executive.

With Bellido’s departure from the cabinet, Castillo sought to mark his distance from the party founded by Vladimir Cerron, the convicted former regional governor and currently prosecuted together with the leadership of the political movement for corruption.

However, in the perception of 52% of those polled, Cerrón is the “real power in the presidential chair”, against 41% who think that Castillo is the one.

The poll revealed that 62% feel the new Minister of the Interior, Luis Barranzuela, does not generate confidence in the fight against drug trafficking, terrorism, corruption, and crime.

Barranzuela has been a lawyer for arms traffickers, as well as for Cerrón and Bellido in various criminal proceedings, and has generated controversy with his apparent opposition to eradicating illegal coca leaf crops.

Another minister questioned is the head of Education, Carlos Gallardo, for belonging to the teachers’ union founded by Castillo, the National Federation of Peruvian Education Workers (Fenate), an organization with alleged links to the political wing of the Shining Path armed gang.

Seventy-three percent said they disagreed with Gallardo’s membership in Fenate because of his links to Conare, the acronym for the National Committee for Reorientation and Reconstruction.

On the other hand, the leftist lawyer Mirtha Vásquez as the new president of the Council of Ministers has received the support of 40%, while 39% reject it and 13% do not have an opinion.

The 82% of those polled said that the governing party Perú Libre had been divided after the last changes in the cabinet, since Cerrón himself threatened, in social networks, with the exclusion of some representatives of the party in the Parliament, such as the legislator Betsy Chávez who assumed the Ministry of Labor.

On the other hand, disapproval against Congress also rose to 77%, 16 points more than in September, and approval dropped to 21%, after long weeks of confrontation for the confidence of the first cabinet and later for the power of the president to raise this resource on issues of his administration.

The Parliament has just approved a law that modifies the possibility for the president to present a question of confidence on issues not related to his administration, with the apparent purpose of avoiding an eventual closure of the Congress, as former president Martin Vizcarra did in 2019.

The survey was applied between October 16 and 19 to a sample of 1,205 people nationwide, with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of error of 2.8%.