LIMA - Peru's most influential newspaper called on Prime Minister Carlos Ferrero on Tuesday to show he is in charge of the country as protests in the capital and a strike by southern peasants who lynched their mayor last month piled pressure on the unpopular government.
El Comercio's call, in a rare front-page editorial, came as an indefinite strike in Ilave, near the Bolivian border, went into a second day and President Alejandro Toledo's government considered imposing a state of emergency to restore order.
The editorial, entitled "Someone has to run the country, now," urged: "Immediate action must be taken to avoid madness -- the president being brought down."
The paper said that duty lay with Ferrero because Toledo earlier this year largely handed over the day-to-day running of the country to avoid pressure for early elections given his approval rating of just 8 per cent.
The government on Monday night declined to impose a state of emergency in Ilave despite protests by about 4000 people who flooded into the town from outlying areas and briefly blocked a bridge between Peru and Bolivia.
Ferrero, who called the area a hotbed of contraband and drugs trafficking, said the protests had so far been peaceful.
A state of emergency would put the military on the streets to keep order and suspend some constitutional rights.
Ilave has been a flashpoint since mid-April when thousands of Aymaras led three weeks of protests culminating in a riot in which mayor Cirilo Robles, whom they accused of corruption, was beaten to death.
Protesters do not agree with Robles' replacement and have vowed to demonstrate indefinitely. Interior Minister Javier Reategui called their demands anarchic and said they could not be accepted.
The Ilave protests have sparked a political crisis for Toledo, but few politicians actually want him to go.
Congress last week voted Reategui's predecessor out of office for mishandling the protests. Toledo is under fire for appointing a political ally, Reategui, as his new interior minister when Ferrero had said the post would go to an independent.
He is also facing a wave of street protests by thousands of coca growers who do not want their crop -- the raw material for cocaine -- eradicated, and health workers demanding more pay.
"This government has lost its authority ... and when you lose authority, there is chaos," opposition lawmaker Rafael Rey told RPP radio.
Congress was due on Tuesday to set a date for debate of a bill that would make it harder to vote out the president -- something commentators say is no coincidence, given Toledo's popularity ratings.
The bill would require 80 votes from the 120-strong Congress to fire the president, instead of a simple majority.
- REUTERS
