MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Peruvian president offers resignation to Congress ahead of an impeachment vote
Embattled President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has offered his resignation to Peru's congress ahead of a scheduled vote on whether to impeach the former Wall Street investor on corruption charges, according to a presidential aide. If congress accepts the resignation, power would transfer to Vice President Martin Vizcarra, who is serving as Peru's ambassador to Canada. Read full article
Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesWow, I wasn't expecting that.
Mar 21st, 2018 - 10:21 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Enrique Massot, I'd like to know your opinion on this, since you have claimed several times that the corruption investigations are solely aimed at the Latin American left.
@DT
Mar 22nd, 2018 - 05:40 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Yes, that's surprising and welcome news.
Accusations of corruption in Latin America have chiefly been used by conservative powers to oust elected governments with left or centre-left leanings--that's a fact.
It is also a fact that corruption has been endemic in Latin America, and has only in recent years been brought to the forefront.
The use of both proven and unproven corruption allegations reduced the electoral chances of Kirchnerist candidate Daniel Scioli in 2015 in Argentina, and allowed conservative powers to remove president Dilma Rousseff from office in Brazil.
Now, the debate around corruption may bring something new to the political arena in Latin America. Seeing that corruption can in fact be prosecuted may make the public more alert about it, abandoning the previous attitude that corruption was an inevitable fact of life.
Electors may become more alert and less tolerant of corrupt candidates and government officials--of any side of the political spectrum.
Whether this is what's happening in Peru right now is to early to say at least for me, because of the multiple interests at play. In Brazil, although corruption seems to be present in all sides, for now it appears to mainly hurt Lula da Silva's electoral chances. In Argentina, there are currently numerous denunciations against president Macri and members of his government that for now are kept in the backburner and silenced by the dominant media, but it's everybody's guess what may happen tomorrow. Only one case of alleged conflict of interests saw the Macri government forgive a $296m debt owed to the state in concept of Argentina's postal service fees owned by the Macri family.
In any event, it would be poetic justice if corruption were to be significantly reduced in Latin America as a consequence of what in the beginning was just a way of ejecting “undesirables” from government.
@EM
Mar 23rd, 2018 - 09:56 pm - Link - Report abuse 0Thanks for your reply.
More knowledge of what goes on in politics will probably be beneficial in the end, even if the laws are being applied unevenly at the moment. I suspect those politicians who thought they could use the law against their opponents will find that once the cat is out of the bag, it is hard to get it back in again.
After Macri's government is out of power, the cases against him and his ministers may start progressing. That's certainly not how it should work, but as you say, electors are more aware of it now and hopefully things will start to change.
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