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Latinnews Daily - 02 February 2018

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Peru’s Kuczynski faces renewed impeachment threat

Development: On 1 February, the leftist opposition Frente Amplio (FA) and Nuevo Perú (NP) benches in Peru’s national congress presented two separate motions calling for President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to be subjected to impeachment proceedings.

Significance: Kuczynski, who narrowly survived impeachment last month, is once again facing the prospect of being ousted by the opposition-controlled congress. Back in December 2017, the NP didn't back the efforts by the centre-right and right-wing opposition parties to impeach the president, which helped to save him. However, now both the two main leftist parties are driving the efforts to remove Kuczynski, and they are seeking the support of the Right to achieve this. It is still unclear if FA and NP will succeed in their efforts, but what is clear is that the beleaguered Kuczynski continues to face major governance problems.

  • Peru’s Left is extremely unhappy with Kuczynski’s decision to grant a presidential pardon to the disgraced former president, Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who was serving a 25-year prison sentence for the various human rights violations committed by his administration during its fight against the Sendero Luminoso leftist guerrillas. Kuczynski’s decision to pardon Fujimori is widely seen as forming part of a backroom deal between the president and the faction of the main right-wing opposition Fuerza Popular (FP, Fujimoristas) party led by Fujimori’s son, Kenji Fujimori, to avoid impeachment.
  • Since Alberto Fujimori's release, the relatives of the victims of the human rights violations committed under the Fujimori administration and leftist political organisations have been staging mass public demonstrations in rejection of the pardon and calling for this to be repealed.Yesterday the FA and the NP decided to move against Kuczynski in the national congress. The two benches presented separate motions to subject Kuczynski to impeachment proceedings for being “morally incapable of governing” due to his “illegal and illegitimate” decision to pardon Alberto Fujimori.
  • Both the FA and NP motions also argue that new evidence has also come to light since last month’s impeachment trial that further implicates Kuczynski in the government corruption scheme centred around Brazilian engineering firm Odebrecht (the original reason for which Kuczynski faced an impeachment trial). FA and NP leaders have called on all other opposition benches in congress to back the new impeachment motion, arguing that there is now “an indispensable need to restore governability” in the country.

Looking Ahead: FP legislators have said that they will support a new impeachment motion if new evidence in support of it is presented. This would appear to increase the chances that Kuczynski will now be impeached. But Kenji Fujimori and his allies have opted to quit the FP bench after being threatened with expulsion over their abstention in the previous impeachment vote; and they have announced that they will now vote with the government bench in congress. In this new congressional scenario, it still unclear if Kuczynski’s detractors can muster the necessary qualified majority to impeach him.

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