Peru Cabinet Reshuffle Could Signal New Crackdown on Protesters

Less than six months into the presidency of Ollanta Humala, Peru is undergoing a cabinet reshuffle, triggered by the resignation of Prime Minister Salomon Lerner on Saturday, which by law forces every other minister to stand down. The fall of a cabinet such a brief time into a presidential term is relatively unusual in Peru, where governments tend to last longer.

Ten ministers out of 19 have been replaced, and Humala named Interior Minister Oscar Valdes, a former military officer, as prime minister. The appointment may indicate a shift to the right for the government, and a tougher stance against protesters in rural areas of the country who are campaigning against resource extraction projects like mining, often on environmental grounds. As the Associated Press reports, the move has been “widely interpreted as signaling less tolerance for social protests.”


Lerner had been a close associate of Humala’s, and helped him win the election this year by reinventing his image as that of a centrist politician, moving away from his former more left-leaning positions. The prime minister was an advocate of negotiating with protesters, and had been involved in talks with protesters in Cajamarca, north Peru, over the controversial Conga gold and copper mining project. The Wall Street Journal reports that his departure has been linked to his failure to reach a solution to the issue.


The Financial Times profiled Lerner in August, before the eruption of the current conflicts noting that some consider him the “brains” behind Humala. It quoted the prime minister as saying that he was prepared to take a tough line against protesters;“Dialogue is clearly important, but we won’t let anyone take control of the streets.”


Last week Humala declared a state of emergency in several provinces as a response to the Conga protests, in a sign that he had decided to take a more hardline stance against the disturbances. This limits the right of assembly for 60 days, and gives the military the power to make arrests without a warrant. Analysts have warned that it could be used to launch repressive crack downs on protesters.


Former President Alejandro Toledo expressed concern over the appointment of Valdes, saying that it signalled the “militarization” of the government, while the AP quoted a representative of nonprofit environmental group Revenue Watch Institute, who said Valdes “incarnates the most authoritarian voice of the regime.”


Valdes dismissed the concerns, framing it instead as a move towards greater unity for the government. "This isn't a militarization of the government,” he said “There were errors in coordination that will be fixed. This Cabinet will work more and talk less." Hepointed out that ex-military officers (one of them himself) had held the positions of defense and interior minister in the outgoing cabinet, which in the new line-up were taken by civilians. Valdes had some conciliatory words for the protesters, saying that dialogue would be the government’s “main weapon” in ending the conflicts.


The issue of social conflict is becoming a defining one for Humala’s government, as noted in previous posts. He came to power on promises to respect the rights of local communities and share profits from the country’s economic boom more fairly, but has since failed to live up to his promise as a mediator in the ongoing social conflicts, disappointing many supporters.


For newspaper La Republica,

A major lession of all this is that the protest leaders have not managed to push the government towards the left (a purpose that intelligence reports attributed to them), but rather to purge the government of a good part of its figures on the left.

It seems that Humala, forced to choose, may be taking the side of business rather than that of the indigenous groups and those on the left that helped bring him to power.


News Briefs

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