Castillo realigns political support; mining protests introduce risks to growth

PERU - Report 18 Jan 2022 by Alfredo Thorne

The rapid fall in President Pedro Castillo’s popularity since he formed his government on July 28th has been surprising. Most previous presidents have either continued to sail for a longer “honeymoon period” on the wave of the high popularity that carried them into office, or have at least able to reverse an early decline. Although the actions of the opposition in Congress have been responsible for some of this diminishment of Castillo’s standing, it can mostly be attributed to his own mistakes.

Indeed, the evidence to date indicates that Castillo and Congress have experienced similar falls in popularity. In December, Congress granted partial approval of the president’s request that the government be delegated the faculty for changing tax legislation, but it did insist that any new tax legislation proposed by the government should be submitted to Congress for thorough discussion.

The government has chosen to interpret this as lack of collaborative spirit on the part of the opposition, even though Congress approved the 2022 governmental budget at the end of November with only minor changes. Unlike during the presidencies of Martín Vizcarra (2018‒2020) and Francisco Sagasti (2020‒2021), Congress cannot be said to have been an impediment to Castillo’s government.

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