“You have to be cheeky to stay in power when the population’s rejection is expressed so forcefully,” said a political scientist
More than 50 dead and hundreds injured show the balance of the protests. (Photo: PL)
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte was severely criticized this Thursday for refusing to step down and for a message in which her questioners said she again tried to disqualify the protests calling for her resignation.
Political scientist and historian Nelson Manrique pointed out that Thursday night’s message, after a protest that shook the city center for most of the day and into midnight, only “helps to deepen the crisis and closes the way to negotiations” to find a way out to find.
“You have to be bold to stay in power when popular disapproval is so strong,” he added, referring to polls that saw massive disapproval and protests against him in most regions.
Analyst Laura Arroyo with her message “You just poured out a bucket of gas at a critical moment in what may seem like a strategy of resistance or a show of force, but is actually desperation disguised as authority”.
He added that the government is a strategy of economic, business, judicial and media co-government aimed not only at making certain voices invisible but also at eliminating lives, alluding to more than fifty deaths during the protest .
“If she says they’re all vandals or applauds the police after seeing more than fifty dead, that’s violence,” he claimed.
“His threats of further persecution and imprisonment will not stop the social protests; it will only fuel them. Lay down your stubbornness for power. Step back now and bring the peace the country is crying out for,” said left-wing Congressman Álex Flores.
Lawmakers told the president that the way out of the crisis and its trail of death was not police or military, which would only make it worse, noting that the solution was political and democratic.
Prominent journalist César Hildebrandt told Boluarte that “you have chosen the hardest path” and that “you seem convinced that power is not giving in and that arrogance is good advice”.
He added that Peru “needs a government that doesn’t put out fires with diesel,” and called influential Prime Minister Alberto Otárola an “arsonist who thinks fire cleanses and violence maybe enlightens.”
Conservative commentator Rosa María Palacios referred to the President’s statement that she was in control of the situation. “If ‘everything is under control’ with 145 roads closed, what will it be like when it’s out of control?”
