An opposition-led alliance won a vote on Monday to lead Peru’s Congress, a setback for socialist President-elect Pedro Castillo on the eve of his inauguration and a sign of challenges ahead to his plans to reform the constitution and increase mining taxes.
A leadership team, headed by centrist legislator María del Carmen Alva from the Popular Action party, won by 69 to 10 votes over a group led by retired military man Jorge Montoya from an ultra-conservative right-wing party.
A list of candidates proposed by Castillo’s Free Peru party was rejected over procedural issues, underscoring challenges the outsider president-elect faces pushing through reform in a fragmented legislature where no single party has a majority.
Alva, who will be Congress president for the 2021-2022 legislative period, had support from the right-wing Popular Force party of Keiko Fujimori, who narrowly lost to Castillo in a knife-edge June 6 runoff and has pledged to fight him.
“Congress will guarantee the balance of powers that the country needs,” Alva said in a speech after the vote, adding she was open to working with the government “within the framework of a respectful dialogue”.
“Let’s end the conflict between the powers,” she said.
Castillo gained strong support from poorer, rural Peruvians on a platform pledging to redraft the Andean country’s decades-old constitution and sharply raise taxes on copper mining firms to pay for reforms in healthcare and education.
