The Peruvian Congress impeached President Martín …

From Lima

President Martín Vizcarra has fallen. Less than two months after being spared a first impeachment attempt, Vizcarra was dismissed from his post tonight by Congress, which accused him of “permanent moral incapacity”, an ambiguous constitutional figure that leaves a wide margin for interpretation. He is accused of receiving bribes years ago when he was governor. An accusation based on testimony still under investigation, but that for a Congress confronted with the Head of State, it was enough to remove him from his functions. Vizcarra’s defeat was considerable. There were 105 votes, out of 130 unicameral congressmen, in favor of impeaching the president, far exceeding the necessary 87. Only 19 voted to save the president and there were four abstentions.

It was an unexpected result. There was uncertainty as to whether the 87 votes would be reached, but no one expected such a large result. The parties which had announced their vote against the impeachment of the president ended up doing so in favor. The departure of the head of state comes amid the serious health and economic crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic, and while Vizcarra had only eight months of management and the elections have already been called for April. At the time of this edition, President Vizcarra had not spoken.

Vizcarra, who took office in March 2018 following the resignation of his predecessor, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski for corruption, During his brief tenure, he raised the flags of the fight against corruption. Now he has been dismissed from his post for corruption. He faced the previous Fujimori Majority Congress, who protected political corruption, which he constitutionally dissolved in September last year and called for parliamentary elections. The new Congress elected in this process he called is the one that has now removed him, accusing him of corruption.

With Vizcarra’s departure, Congress leader Manuel Merino will assume the presidency, member of the center-right popular action party, the main bench of Congress, with 24 members. In the first frustrated attempt to drive Vizcarra away, Merino, a little-known politician until he assumed the presidency of Congress last March and questioned about his work in that position, knocked unsuccessfully on the door of the barracks to seek the support of the military so that he takes power. He will assume the presidency on Tuesday.

The first impeachment process against Vizcarra concerned the alleged irregular recruitment of a third-level official. This time the accusations are more serious. The president is accused of having received bribes from two construction companies for 2.3 million soles (approximately 660 thousand dollars) while he was governor of the small region of Moquegua, between the years 2011 and 2014. It is specified that the bribes would have been paid for irrigation works and for the construction of a hospital.

Three businessmen from two construction companies who are sued in the case of the “construction club”, a cartel of companies which distributed public works by paying bribes, seeking an agreement with the prosecution to exchange their testimonies against a reduction of their possible sentences, affirm to have paid bribes to Vizcarra to resume this work. Former minister in Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s government (2016-2018), José Hernández, an old friend of Vizcarra since before he was governor and with whom he shared a ministerial cabinet, told authorities that he served as an intermediary for the payment of these bribes.

“Here I am, I’m not running,” Vizcarra began his 51-minute defense before Congress. He stressed that in this time of crisis due to the pandemic, a hard-hit economy and the elections already called, its elimination would generate instability. this would complicate the serious health and economic crisis.

With regard to the charges against him, he called the charges “false” and attributed them to an alleged revenge by businessmen from the “construction club” for reducing his illegal advantages when he was got to the government. “These are unproven facts. Can a president be removed from office only for unfounded statements? “. The votes answered that it was possible.

During the lengthy parliamentary debate, attacks on the president abounded. Even those who voted against the impeachment of the president, in order to avoid a scenario of instability, they argued, stressed that there were “reasonable indications” that complicate the head of state in the alleged collection. of bribes when he was governor and expected to be investigated and ultimately tried at the end of his term.

With genuine concerns about corruption, theThe insulators with a past and a present, theirs or their parties, linked to corruption, disguised themselves as moralizers, and with imposed conviction, defying the memory and intelligence of those who heard them, they delivered anti-corruption speeches to demand the removal of Vizcarra.

Among those who voted to impeach the president were lawmakers Fujimori, with a long history of corruption, and who now relished their revenge against the man who lost their majority in Parliament and who supported the anti-corruption processes that led their boss Keiko Fujimori to prison. The same was true of the lawmakers of the ultra-nationalist Union for Peru party, whose main parliamentarians are accused of corruption and who is being taken to prison by the former military officer Antauro Humala – brother of former president Ollanta – in prison since 2004 for the deaths of four policemen in the seizure of a police station in a frustrated attempt to overthrow former President Alejandro Toledo; from Podemos Peru, a party led by a businessman turned millionaire with shoddy university affairs and who was arrested two days ago on charges of bribing magistrates to obtain the irregular registration of his party; of a party which responds to an evangelical sect; most members of the Popular Action Congress, Vizcarra’s replacement group; a sector of the small bank of the left Frente Amplio, which has only eight members, and a few other parliamentarians.

Among the few opponents of Vizcarra’s impeachment were lawmakers from the centrist Morado party and a few female parliamentarians from the Broad Front, among a few others. They rejected the dismissal because of the risks of instability in this difficult situation, but demanded that the prosecution investigate the charges against Vizcarra, which is already underway.

An Ipsos poll released a few days ago reveals that 79% of the population has opposed the removal of the presidential mandate at this stage. Vizcarra had an acceptance between 54 and 57 percent, while his replacement has an approval that sits just between 22 and 24 percent, according to recent surveys by Ipsos and the Institute of Peruvian Studies, respectively.

Vizcarra is now expected to be investigated by the prosecution and possibly the courts. The same fate of the last Peruvian presidents.