Political scientist Carmen Ilizarbe: “Constituent Assembly is the only potential democratic solution” to social protests

Peruvian political scientist and anthropologist Carmen Ilizabe sure of EFE that in the current crisis in his country “to create constituent Assembly This is the only potential democratic way out.”

“I think that at present it would be a good way out by peaceful means, the revision of the Constitution and the adoption of a new one – that’s what we should be promoting,” said the researcher, who was speaking at the Traficantes de Sueños bookstore in Madrid.

“The founding process would create new leadership, new programs and space for discussion at different levels,” he added.

Anti-government demonstrations began in Peru last December amid accusations of a coup d’état by then-president Pedro Castillo, with the population taking to the streets with demands such as the resignation of new President Dina Boluarte, the closure of the Congress, the expectation of elections and a constituent assembly.

WHY ARE PROTESTS OCCURRED?

Carmen Ilizabe analyzes protest as an instrument of popular sovereignty in his new book Democracy and the street. Protests and counter-hegemony in Peru (Institute of Peruvian Studies).

His anthropological and political analysis begins with the March of the Four Suyos, the social outbreak of 2000, when the regime of Alberto Fujimori was nearing its end.

“I tried to understand this march because there was no strong social or political opposition in Peru. It was inexplicable why this popular uprising suddenly broke out in a country that was not thought to care about anything, it was difficult to understand,” he said.

For ten years, the author studied the protests in detail and was directly involved in some, but first of all she compiled a national map of mobilizations, looking through the newspapers of the last years of Fujimori’s rule, and then data from the Office of the Ombudsman.

“What I was interested in was how this space is formed in which people take on political self-representation in order to defend their demands or try to resist the policies of different governments,” he added.

Carmen Ilizabe In a book based on his doctoral dissertation, he explains that since 2000, “Peru’s political order has changed, but the expected important changes in the economy have remained unchanged.”

“There are different ways of making demands and demands on the state, but I think the most important underlying problem is that hardly any different protest groups such as urban, rural, unionized, youth, students and the largest and most located group in the countryside, away from Lima or from power groups, they are not considered valid interlocutors of the state,” he said.

For this reason, he believes that the protests do not happen because they are the first choice of citizens, but because they come after memorials, letters and a number of institutional channels that do not work effectively in Peru.

STREET AS POLITICAL POWER

“Then it becomes a kind of struggle, a bit of arm-twisting with the government in power, or the authorities they complain about,” he added.

ABOUT, Carmen Ilizabe He stressed that there are no strong political parties in Peru, citizens feel that they are not represented by institutions and take to the streets to exercise political power that does not end problems.

For thirty years, the system of political parties in Peru has not been restructured, and no new important organizations have emerged that are able to formulate a party identity, with an ideology, programs, visible leaders, activists and organized groups at the national level.

“It is in the face of this absence that the ghost of the street and these forms of self-representation appear, but also very fragmented. From the street, at best, you can get a veto, but this is not enough to reshape the political system or economic dynamics, ”is one of his conclusions.

In Peru, in addition to institutions, there is a space for the political participation of citizens, which is the street, “another form of political public sphere with a number of interesting elements that allow us to rethink the possibilities of democracy,” he concluded. Carmen Ilizabe.

As a result of the latest protests in the country, 1,880 people were injured, including 580 police officers, according to the office of the Ombudsman of Peru, and 70 people were killed, according to various sources.

(EFE)