Undeterred by this, the populist right-wing Alianza para el Progreso (APP) party presented a bill on 13 December for Peru to withdraw from the American Convention on Human Rights, or Pact of San José, to clear the way for re-introducing capital punishment, as well as denouncing the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Corte IDH). Peru signed up to the Convention in 1978. The ombudsman, Josué Gutiérrez, who denounced the APP’s initiative as “populist”, said Peru should not be abandoning the regional justice system in order to “apply the death penalty [for unpopular politicians] to possibly gain an extra point of popularity”.
The right-wing Renovación Popular (RP) and the left-wing Perú Libre (PL) have also long advocated Peru’s withdrawal from the Pact of San José, accusing it of imposing restrictions on Peru’s sovereignty. Critics claim that this is for an ulterior motive and that legislators in the scandal-plagued and deeply unpopular congress are determined to shield themselves from future criminal investigations and prosecution and are concerned that they cannot manipulate international courts of justice in the same way that they can national ones.
Tensions with economy ministry
Meanwhile, relations between congress and the eco
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