I’m going to try to start doing more regular posts with weekly updates on what’s happening in some of the places on my radar. These won’t be as long or in-depth as the standard pieces, but hopefully they can provide an explanation of some of the current events in the world.
Peru
Pedro Castillo was inaugurated as President on Wednesday, putting a final end to the multi-week attempt by the far-right to delegitimize his election win. His inauguration was of course attended by numerous foreign dignitaries, including Evo Morales from Bolivia and King Felipe VI of Spain. The difference in the reception of the two set the tone for Castillo’s presidency. Evo did photo-ops with Castillo, and was pictured eating dinner with Vladimir Cerron, the leader of Castillo’s party, Peru Libre. Along with Bolivian President Luis Arce, he is touring parts of the the country with Castillo. It’s clear that the Bolivian left (that is to say, Evo, Arce, and the MAS party) will be close allies of Castillo, and hopefully guiding influences on his governance. In meeting Felipe however, Castillo was criticized by commentators for “disrespectfully” wearing his trademark hat, and in his inauguration address, with the king in the crowd, Castillo said that Spain created the “caste system” that is the cause of Peru’s inequalities. A strong symbolic gesture, especially as his swearing-in came on the 200th anniversary of Peru’s independence from Spain. Castillo himself comes from a peasant background, with parents who didn’t learn to read and write. He is a product of this caste system and the fact that he's repudiated the snobbery of the Peruvian elite by winning the presidency is remarkable and inspiring.
The new government is already facing some bumps however. They had their first defeat on Monday, as the new Congress elected the members of the presidency of Congress, essentially the speakership and three other leadership roles. Peru Libre’s list, which included them, the leftist Juntos por el Peru, and the Christian democrat/liberal Somos Peru and Partido Morado, didn’t have enough votes to beat a list put forward by right-wing opposition parties, and backed by Keiko Fujimori’s party, Fuerza Popular. With the opposition in the driver’s seat in Congress, it will be difficult for Castillo and PL to advance their agenda, though some of those parties expressed that they do not wish to be obstructionist.
More trouble came on Thursday, when Castillo announced his Prime Minister, formally known as the President of the Council of Ministers (cabinet), as Guido Bellido, a Peru Libre congressman with a history of controversial remarks. Bellido’s appointment was met with instant condemnation from many camps, including from Castillo’s allies earlier in the week, Somos Peru and Partido Morado, who said they could not support a government led by Bellido.
Bellido represents the Cusco department, in Peru’s south, and is one of only four out of 37 Peru Libre congressmen who joined the party before the 2021 election campaign, having become a member in 2017 or 2018, according to different sources. El Comercio places him in the camp of Cerron loyalists (as opposed to the PL congressmen who have stronger ties to Castillo, many of whom are from the teachers’ movement), so it suggests that Cerron is playing an active role in the new government and may have been the one pushing for Bellido to be named. Bellido has drawn criticism for sexist and homophobic remarks, as well as for supposed Shining Path apologia (he is under investigation for terrorism apologia, but the comments in question seem fairly innocent to me), but to be sure, a lot of the backlash is due to the frustration from various media and political sectors that Castillo/PL are sticking to a left-wing hard line and not appointing a moderate that will dilute their agenda.
The appointment also appeared to cause an important prospective cabinet member, Pedro Francke, to back out. Francke is an economist, and affiliated with the Juntos por el Peru coalition that backed Verónika Menzoda for President. Francke is much more moderate than Peru Libre and Vladimir Cerron, but Castillo brought him on board as an economic advisor in the second round of the campaign. Francke has made assurances that the Castillo government will not be pursuing the nationalization of resources, contrary to PL’s election platform, and has been seen as a voice that can reassure the markets that a Castillo presidency will not be a disaster for business interests. He backed out just before the new Council of Ministers was supposed to be sworn in yesterday, leaving Peru Libre in disarray (it appears they didn’t expect his withdrawal), and with an incomplete cabinet. However, just a day later, Francke was back in, apparently having received assurances, and he was sworn in as Economy and Finance minister. A rocky start, to say the least.
Lebanon
Members of Parliament named Najib Mikati as the next Prime Minister-designate in parliamentary consultations on Monday, following Saad Hariri’s withdrawal from the position. Hariri was given the task of forming a new government all the way back in October, and took until now to accept failure. It has been nearly a year since Hassan Diab’s government resigned following the Beirut port explosion, but Diab is still caretaker PM.
Hariri had the backing of most parties to form government, but efforts broke down in negotiations with Gebran Bassil, leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and son-in-law of President Michel Aoun. Without Aoun’s support, a PM cannot form a government, and the animosity between Hariri and Bassil has reached the point where they can’t come to an agreement on the allocation of cabinet ministries.
As for Mikati, he’s an old face in Lebanese politics. Like Hariri, he’s one of the Sunni leaders periodically chosen as a default choice for Prime Minister, and has served in the position twice before, in 2005 and from 2011-2014. Whenever government formation talks stall, as they have now, or as they did after the 2018 elections, he’s usually mentioned as a possible candidate, and so now that the Lebanese political class have tried nothing and are all out of ideas, here he is again.
Mikati is a multi-billionaire, likely the richest man in Lebanon. He made his money in telecommunications and has established a political constituency in the northern city of Tripoli, where patronage networks buy him votes. Despite his wealth, Mikati has never been able to establish a large voter base, and his Azm Movement party and their allies only won 4 seats in the last parliamentary elections.
Mikati may be able to succeed where Hariri has failed, since he doesn’t have the same personal rivalry with Gebran Bassil, but it won’t be a success for the Lebanese people. Mikati is one of the figures that has participated in the theft of Lebanon’s wealth that has brought it to the current economic crisis. In 2019 he was charged with corruption in relation to housing loan graft. He owns a $100,000,000 yacht while ordinary Lebanese struggle to buy food and fuel. And his shady activities aren’t limited to Lebanon either. Mikati came under fire last week after it was announced his company would be buying telecom networks in Myanmar, which activists say gives support to the country’s military dictatorship.
It’s hard to see how Mikati will be any different from any of his predecessors if he does manage to form a government. International actors, particularly the French, are placing a big emphasis on government formation as a priority, but whether a new cabinet is technocratic or political, including all parties or those from one camp, as long as it serves the interests of the rich and not the poor, it will not save Lebanon from its situation. Mikati will only act in his own interests as he sees them, as will the other political leaders that he needs the support of. All of them will prioritize maintaining their power and wealth. For fear of sounding like a broken record, the only solution is to turf out the entire political class and implement radical wealth redistribution, but that’s not something international powers are interested in. Bringing Mikati in might persuade donor nations to give Lebanon a few more band-aids for the crisis, but unless the underlying causes behind inequality and a weak economy are fixed, the country is still in trouble.