The same thing happened days ago when Jaime Abensur, another Fujimorist, asked to censor her. Erre con err that is not in the regulations. In fact, it is not. It is only developed for the board of directors, but by extension it could be applied to commission presidencies. Furthermore, it is another tradition of politics: receiving a slap, going down to the plain and starring in the duel. I was going to win and come out stronger! But here is an essential note to try to understand Giannina: she embraces her idea of law and justice with blind conviction. You don’t need to be injected with more ‘strength’ than you think you have. Tradition and dialogue with the opposite are secondary. Sticking to your position, without giving in, is a vital issue. ‘Square’ would be a very simple way to define it, it is something more complex, which has to do with identity.
Constitution Commission of the Chamber of Deputies is chaired by Giannina Avendaño. (Photo: Congress)
Avendaño is a lawyer with a long career in the Ombudsman’s Office, especially in the environmental area. He has been a member of Together for Peru since the last decade. When Roberto Sánchez received the Mincetur (Ministry of Commerce and Tourism) quota from Pedro Castillo, he pulled her into his cabinet of advisors, of which she became head. Then he gave him the direction of Cenfotur, a tourism studies institute attached to the ministry. After Castillo’s fall in December 2022, Giannina returned to the Ombudsman’s Office, from which she had requested unpaid leave. Among the defense reports in which he participated there is one on road concessions, which was very unfavorable to Rutas de Lima. If Porky recognized it, he could hug her for it. I don’t know if, faced with a circumstance of that caliber, he would still remain impassive.
“Tradition and dialogue with the opposite are secondary. Closing oneself in one’s position, without giving in, is a vital issue. ‘Square’ would be a very simple way of defining it, it is something more complex, which has to do with identity.”
Power to a certain extent
I asked a congresswoman who knows her if Avendaño is from JP’s ‘Sanchista’ group, to differentiate her from the Castillistas. “I wouldn’t describe it that way, she is very independent,” he responded and cited his work in the defense office. Although she has been head of Roberto’s cabinet of advisors when he was minister, which forced her to work closely and depending on him, remember that in 2022 she went on to direct Cenfotur, moving away from the ministerial office. Perhaps her impassivity also got on Roberto’s nerves at times.
He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t need to. Nor is she provocative and charcoal-burning like her coreligionist Chipana. If you get on someone’s nerves it’s not because you spit in their face; but for his imperturbable serenity. She’s not angry, she’s stubborn. The stubborn person does not win because he is passionate about defending his positions; He wins, simply, because he does not give in, while his rival rants. But the stubborn can make mistakes, of course. The consultations with commissions and ‘the bases’ that Giannina organized in Constitución were perceived as a delaying maneuver. He had to suspend them. The ruling, rejecting everything, also lost by a landslide, although I have the doubt as to how much he defended it out of conviction and how much out of bench discipline. I think it was because of both, because it is no coincidence that he belongs to the JP bench. On the radical left there are many self-confident people. It is a requirement of radicality. At the opposite extreme, something similar happens.
There was a singular moment in the plenary session of Deputies in which, in extremis, the limited delegation of powers was approved. Avendaño intervened to affirm, as impassive as she was extremely sure of herself, that no opinion could be discussed there other than what was discussed in her commission. Come on, there is another congressional tradition that is captured in a phrase often repeated these days: ‘the plenary session can do everything’. Chacón had the pleasure of replying. The indifference of the rest, including the president of the chamber, Óscar Reto, proved the Fujimorista right. In the midst of Giannina’s monolithic, impassive, inscrutable stubbornness, I thought I saw, despite her, a hint of blush as she rediscovered – how many times has it happened to her! – that the world around her, that of politics and that of competing ideologies and people, is not as she wants to believe it should be, nor does it have to be.
