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.

The votes of 87 parliamentarians out of the 130 who make up Peru's unicameral parliament were needed to remove the center-right president, in power since 2018.

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.

>> To read: Dissolved by President Vizcarra, the Parliament of Peru retaliates and suspends it for a year

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 of Parliament, 65 parliamentarians, out of the 52 required, having asked to start the impeachment procedure.

"The president lied to the people"

"The speed with which this process has been carried out reflects an institutional crisis which further discredits the democratic system in the eyes of the people," political analyst Augusto Alvarez Rodrich told AFP.

At the opening of the debates around 10 am local (3 pm GMT), Martin Vizcarra went to Parliament to plead his case, although he is not required to do so by law: "I am 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".

For conservative parliamentarian Maria Teresa Céspedes, the dismissal was justified because "the president lied to the people".

This political crisis does not suffer from 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.

"Politicians should focus on other things that are much more important, namely the economic situation and the pandemic," said David Gonzalez, a 53-year-old self-employed person.

Peruvian support for President Vizcarra

While Congress debated its future, Martin Vizcarra visited the city of Trujillo, in the north of the country, where he called on parliamentarians to "work together for (...) the people, for the young people who demand that politicians stop fighting and put Peru first ”.

"No one comes out a winner" because "the population has understood that there is a political struggle as the pandemic kills Peruvians and the country is plunged into frightening unemployment which will only recover in five years", added the political analyst.

80% of Peruvians believed Martin Vizcarra, 57, should stay in power, according to a poll released on Tuesday.

The support he enjoys is due in particular to his intransigence towards Parliament, unlike his predecessors, and his anti-corruption crusade.

Peru has experienced significant political instability in recent years, with the last four presidents struggling with the justice system.

It is also one of the countries hardest hit in the world by the pandemic, with more than 750,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and more than 31,000 deaths, for a population of 33 million inhabitants.

With AFP

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