Andes, Dispatches, Features, Peru

Why Peru’s president won’t be attending Lula’s Inauguration

December 31, 2022 By Jacob Kessler

Tomorrow, Brazil will have a new president. After a tense run-off election with incumbent Jair Bolsonarao, former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was narrowly victorious by a two-point margin. Bolsonaro has not conceded and recently fled to Florida, leaving his Vice President in charge for his final days in office. His departure means he will be absent from Lula’s inauguration ceremony and will avoid the Brazilian democratic tradition for the outgoing president to present a presidential sash to his successor.

Bolsonaro is not the only world leader skipping out on the ceremony in Brasilia. Despite attending Bolsonaro’s inauguration in 2019, Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Viktor Orban will not be traveling to Brazil for the inauguration in 2023. However, according to Brazilian media conglomerate Globo, at least nineteen heads of state will be in attendance tomorrow, many of whom are leaders from Latin American countries. This includes the presidents or prime ministers of Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay, Paraguay, Colombia, and Venezuela (the latter only recently able to enter Brazil after the overturning of a Bolsonaro-era ban barring him from the country).

Despite the strong showing from Latin American heads of state, one president will be conspicuously absent from the inauguration. Peru’s president, Dina Boluarte, battling countless domestic crises, will remain in Peru. 

On Monday, Boluarte proposed traveling to Brazil to attend Lula’s ceremony (heads of state in Peru must obtain Congressional approval for any travel abroad). 

It makes sense for Boluarte to attend Lula’s inauguration. Lula was one of the few Latin American leaders to recognize her as the legitimate president of Peru. In a cautious statement posted to his website on December 7th, Lula wrote: “I hope that President Dina Boluarte succeeds in her task of reconciling the country and leading it on the path of development and social peace.”

In addition to supporting her Brazilian ally, attending this ceremony might have also earned Boluarte some much needed legitimacy before the eyes of the Peruvian people and the international community. 

Peru’s newly sworn-in Foreign Minister, Ana Cecilia Gervasi, also was pushing for Boluarte to travel to Brazil. In a conversation with a Peruvian news agency Gervasi said: “[The trip to Brazil] is an extremely important occasion for the president to personally carry the message of democratic and constitutional normality that exists in Peru and exercise presidential diplomacy.”

Other than Boluarte and Gervasi, many in Peru were firmly against her travel to Brazil. Popular journalist and host of La Encerrona — a YouTube show with more than a quarter million subscribers — Marco Sifuentes has called Boluarte’s desire to travel to Brazil a “provocation.” 

“[Those supporting Boluarte’s trip to Brazil] are living in a parallel Peru, where everything is in order and whose Congress doesn’t have an historic disapproval rating,” Sifuentes remarked in his program on Wednesday. 

Without a Vice President to take charge, the Boluarte administration was forced to present legislation which would have amended the Constitution to allow Jose Williams, the president of Congress, to take charge of the country while she travels to Brazil. But as Sifuentes pointed out, at such a turbulent time, leaving a historically unpopular Congress in charge of the country would have risked plunging the Andean nation into further disarray.

It is perhaps for this reason that instead of voting on this legislation, Congress’ Constitutional Committee chose to delay their responsibility to vote and instead first consult the opinions of constitutional experts. However, before Congress had the chance to reject Boluarte’s legislation, her administration took action. 

Faced with an unaccommodating Congress, Peru’s Justice and Human Rights Minister José Tello announced Wednesday that the President would not be traveling to Brazil.

“The president is not going to travel to the inauguration of Lula da Silva in Brazil because we are aware of the debate that has been taking place in the Congress of the Republic regarding the draft legislative resolution that we have presented,” said Tello at a press conference on Wednesday. 

Finally, on December 30th, Boluarte posted on Twitter that she would not be traveling to Brazil and that Peru’s prime minister and foreign minister would be traveling in her place. 

Tomorrow, Lula will begin his third term as president and will become the oldest Brazilian to serve as the country’s head of state. Meanwhile, Peru’s first female president will remain in the country and continue her attempt to avoid controversy and bring peace to the battered nation.