Yearbook 2017
Peru. The year ended with a growing political crisis in
Peru. Ever since Keiko Fujimori lost the 2016 presidential
election, she has, through her Party of People's Power (FP),
supported majority in Congress for an intense political
campaign against President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. In
September, his Prime Minister Fernando Zavala faced the
prospect of a distrust vote against his Minister of
Education Marilú Martens, which could have triggered a new
election. Kuczynski chose to dismiss Zavala and replace him
with Congressman and party colleague Mercedes Aráoz, and
also replace five other members of government. Government
reforms are common in Peru and both the finance minister,
the transport minister and the energy minister were forced
to resign during the year due to the same pressure from
Fujimori's FP. The direct cause of the drama was the
opposition's criticism of Marten's way of handling a
multi-month teacher strike, but in the background an old
power struggle between Kuczynski and supporters of former
President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) and his daughter Keiko. Already
in mid-October, a distrust vote was directed at the new
prime minister, who, however, managed. In November, the
government crisis was followed by threats of national law
against national prosecutor Pablo Sánchez for breach of his
duties in connection with investigations into the corruption
scandal surrounding the Brazilian construction company
Odebrecht. In fact, Sánchez had just
launched an investigation of Fujimori himself into the
scandal on the basis of leaked documents from Brazil and
called to testify before a congressional committee.
According to
Countryaah.com, President Kuczynski and grassroots movements accused
Fujimori's party of undermining democracy by variously
staging a constitutional coup and installing a
"congressional dictatorship". On the other hand, the
Odebrech scandal also cast its shadow over President
Kuczynski, who is suspected of receiving illegal campaign
funding. At the same time, all former presidents since 2001
seemed to have received several million dollars in bribes,
and in July the Prosecutor General's Office ordered that
Ollanta Humala (President 2011-16) and his wife be banned
from departure pending further bribery investigations.
Already in April, President Kuczynski began publicly
voicing the opportunity to pardon 78-year-old Alberto
Fujimori, who has been in prison since 2005, and on
Christmas Eve announced the president's decision. It was
speculated that the measure would be intended to appease the
opposition and thereby avoid national law. But the decision
instead triggered violent protests from other parties and
human rights groups that categorically opposed the release
of the president, still largely remembered for his political
repression in the 1990s.
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