Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in a press conference. Photo: Mario Guzmán/EFE.
Mexico will not hand over to Peru the pro tempore presidency of the Pacific Alliance (AP), because the government of Dina Boluarte is “spurious,” stated the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
“There is the presidency [of the AP], I am going to give instructions to the secretary of Foreign Relations to notify the members… I do not want to hand it over to a government that I consider spurious,” AMLO said at his morning press conference on Friday, February 17.
AMLO califica de "espurio" al gobierno de facto en Perú y sentenció: "¡Yo no quiero legitimar un golpe de Estado!” negándose así a entregar a Dina Boluarte la presidencia de la Alianza del Pacífico… #PeruEnDictadura pic.twitter.com/E7LxdapjHG
— DAViD.cu (@_Davidcu) February 17, 2023
Mexico will consult the other two members of the alliance founded in 2011, Chile and Colombia, on handing over to Peru the pro tempore presidency that Mexico held since 2018. Peru was to receive the presidency at the Pacific Alliance summit to be held in Mexico City in November last year, but that meeting was postponed as the Peruvian Congress did not give permission to President Pedro Castillo to travel to Mexico to attend the summit, barely a month before ousting him in a parliamentary coup.
“I am going to make the consultation, because I do not want to legitimize a coup d’état,” López Obrador said. “We cannot do it, it would be against freedoms, against human rights, and anti-democratic. We don’t support that.”
“As for the Pacific Alliance, we are looking for a way to hand over the presidency; it belongs to Peru but when the meeting was going to take place, they did not allow the [Peruvian] president to travel,” the Mexican president added.
When that happened, a meeting in Lima instead of Mexico City was considered, but the member countries of the bloc considered it not convenient due to the political crisis that Peru was going through at that time.
“We were going to visit Peru, but Pedro Castillo was arrested, for which I consider it to be a technical coup, although they also used the police,” AMLO said. “I think it was an illegal act, arbitrary, undemocratic, the will of the Peruvian people was not respected.”
The crisis
The Mexican president considers the situation in Peru very serious after the removal of the legitimate president of the country, Pedro Castillo.
“They sent him [Castillo] to prison, on no legal grounds,” he stressed. “They do not respect the will of the people, and behind it is a racist classist attitude.”
According to López Obrador, because Castillo is a poor teacher from the Peruvian highlands, he was “harassed in five or six impeachment attempts,” as he did not have a majority in Congress.
He also criticized Dina Boluarte, who said on February 16 that López Obrador is harming the regional alliance “by continuing to support the former president who carried out a coup… he does not want to hand over to us the pro tempore presidency of the AP.”
The Mexican president added that in Castillo’s ousting there was a “betrayal by those who were supposed to support him, so much so that when he was arrested, those who carried it out were his own guards.” The coup against Castillo was the product of “a relationship of complicity, compromise, a criminal association, a whole conspiracy,” he said.
Castillo is in pretrial detention in a Lima prison, investigated by the Attorney General’s Office for the alleged crimes of rebellion and conspiracy, among other charges.
Since December, when Castillo was arrested and after Boluarte took power, numerous protests have taken place in Peru, particularly in the southern Andean zone. The protesters demand the resignation of de facto President Boluarte, the dissolution of Congress, early general elections, and a referendum on a constituent assembly, which was one of Castillo’s electoral promises.
The four countries that make up the alliance, namely Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, represent more than 40% of Latin America’s gross domestic product and receive 38% of the region’s foreign direct investment.
(Sputnik)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SC
