“The president never thought of stepping down at all,” he said, insisting the president’s proposal for an intergovernmental agreement with the opposition-controlled Congress failed with two attempts to vacate (remove) him.
He made the statement after a week in which a march of thousands of people demanding his resignation ended in violence and unrest and a second mobilization of similar content.
There were also large demonstrations by the union movement, which opposed this pressure in various cities but demanded that Castillo keep his campaign promises of change and not give in to the right.
Salas revealed that his predecessor in the culture portfolio, Ángel Ildefonso, mentioned the possibility of the president’s resignation at a Council of Ministers meeting, but Castillo and most of the incumbents opposed him, arguing that democracy should prevail.
He added that the head of state was elected for a five-year term and it was only eight months, and he acknowledges mistakes and believes they can be corrected.
He also said that the solution to the crisis is not to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections and hope should not be given up in achieving governability to move the country forward.
For her part, the Conservative Speaker of Parliament María del Carmen Alva asked about the possibility of electing a new President and a new Congress – on which she was reluctant – recalling that the legislature had asked for the resignation of Castillo, whom she had accused of what he called “chaos and mismanagement”.
Alva added that “no one here is sticking to the position” and that if general elections are necessary for resignation, so be it.
Congress twice tried unsuccessfully to vacate (remove) Castillo and urged him to resign with demonstrations against him, which also failed to achieve the goal.
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