Peru: President Martin Vizcarra escapes impeachment proceedings
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra at the end of his hearing by Parliament on September 18, 2020 in Lima.
AP Photo / Rodrigo Abd
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra escaped impeachment for "moral incapacity", his opponents failing to muster the number of votes sufficient to overthrow him Friday, September 18 in Parliament.
Publicity
Read more
The votes of 87 parliamentarians out of the 130 who make up the unicameral Parliament of Peru were necessary to remove the center-right president, in power since 2018. But after ten hours of debate, only 32 deputies voted to endorse
the impeachment procedure for "moral incapacity"
, initiated last week by this same Parliament following accusations of manipulation of witnesses in an investigation for suspicion of corruption.
The case concerns the hiring of a singer by the Ministry of Culture, the justice suspecting the artist of having benefited from a contract of convenience.
Audio recordings in which
Martin Vizcarra
asks witnesses to lie had precipitated the vote on a motion by Parliament, 65 parliamentarians out of the 52 required having asked to start the impeachment procedure.
At the opening of the debates around 10 a.m. local (3 p.m. UT), Martin Vizcarra went to Parliament to plead his case, although he is not required to do so by law.
“
I'm not leaving, I haven't done it before and I'm not going to do it now,
” he said.
But he then withdrew, leaving the floor to his lawyer, Me Roberto Pereira, who asked for "
the rejection
" of the procedure "
because it suffers from a lack of characterization of the facts
".
This political crisis is not linked to ideological differences, since the president and the parliamentary majority are both center-right.
It comes down, according to analysts and in the eyes of the population, to a simple power struggle, with the controversy around the singer's contract as a pretext.
According to a poll released Tuesday, 80% of Peruvians believed Martin Vizcarra, 57, should stay in power.
(With agencies)
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Peru
Martin vizcarra