Peruvian PM Guido Bellido resigns two months after assuming office

Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced on Wednesday that
he had accepted Prime Minister Guido Bellido’s resignation. Guido resigned from
his socialist cabinet two months after taking office. He departed
without providing an explanation.

Bellido is a member of the Marxist-Leninist Free Peru
Party, but he was considered a more hard-left member of the government. Bellido
has recently spoken publicly about nationalising Peru’s natural gas resources,
which are now controlled by a consortium led by Argentina‘s Pluspetrol.

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He had also defended his labour minister, who had been
questioned by Congress in a formal hearing for allegedly having been a part of
a Maoist insurgency in his youth. Bellido said he would put the entire cabinet
up for a confidence vote if Congress tried to censure the labour minister, Iver
Maravi.

“The balance of powers is the bridge between the
rule of law and democracy,” Castillo conveyed in his address to the nation
announcing Bellido’s resignation.

“Votes of confidence, (Congressional) hearings and
censure should not be used to create political instability,” he continued.

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Bellido, a Peruvian who speaks Quechua, had mixed
outcomes in making agreements with indigenous groups that massively supported
Castillo into power.

Bellido signed a deal with a province near the massive
Las Bambas copper mine, which is controlled by China’s MMG Ltd, on Tuesday.
Residents in a nearby neighbourhood, on the other hand, began their own
demonstration on Wednesday, calling for the prime minister’s resignation.

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Guido Bellido was named Prime Minister on 29th July 2021. Bellido
delivered his inauguration speech to Congress exclusively in Quechua, to the
chagrin of opposition members who demanded he speak in Spanish; Bellido
concluded his speech by dedicating it “to all those Peruvians who perished
without ever comprehending a word uttered in this Congress.”

Guido Bellido was investigated by
the Office of the Prosecutor against Terrorism in May 2021 for the suspected
crime of “apology to terrorism.”