Peru's president faces impeachment vote

As Peru's Congress votes on a presidential impeachment Friday, President Martin Vizcarra deals with a crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic that has led Peru to report the highest per capita virus fatalities in the world.

"We cannot ease ourselves, the enemy will not surrender," said the 57-year-old president surrounded by military leaders and in a key week to resist the hardest blow sent by the new Congress that on Friday will decide whether to remove him from office.

The scandal broke out a week ago after a congressman broadcasted audios in congress where Vizcarra supposedly granted government contracts to his friend, singer Richard Cisneros.

Still, recent studies by IPSOS Peru shows that Vizcarra enjoys of healthy approval rates that have only waned after the political crisis broke up.

"In one of the biggest crises that Peru has had to experience, and yet we see it, the tremendous effects this produces are not correlated with a very low approval, on the contrary, he still has acceptable approval," said political analyst Fernando Tuesta in Lima.

Experts say that if Vizcarra survives the impeachment voting that is due on Friday, he could still be suspected of corruption.

"But I do not think that those who promote the vacancy are going to get the 87 votes necessary for the vacancy, because this would not solve the crisis. On the contrary, it would increase a crisis due to a change of government", added Tuesta.

In his more than two years in office, President Martin Vizcarra had beaten a powerful group of judges, prosecutors, politicians and businessmen who modified lawsuits at will to benefit those close to them.

He had also unsuccessfully proposed to reform political parties to cleanse them of convicts, democratize their internal elections and make money transparent in political campaigns.

The speed with which Vizcarra was taken to the wall also showed he is a political orphan.

For the first time in 40 years, Vizcarra is the first president to govern without a bench in Congress, an institution with high disapproval rates, similar to when Vizcarra closed it a year ago for obstructing his government.

Vizcarra closed the Congress on September 30, 2019 in a race against the representatives. Minutes after being dissolved, the Congress suspended Vizcarra from office and swore in another president.

The Armed Forces backed Vizcarra.

A new Congress was opened on March 16, the first day of the lockdown in Peru, a measure that in 100 days left more 6.5 million people unemployed, triggered poverty and will generate the third worst economic decline globally in 2020, according to the World Bank .

Vizcarra served as Vicepresident and Peru's Ambassador to Canada in 2018, when he unexpectedly assumed the presidency after his predecessor, Pedro Pablo Kucynski resigned under pressure from corruption allegations linked to the construction company Odebrecht.

Kuckynski was then threatened by the Congress to be dismissed under "permanent moral incapacity", the same argument that is used now against Vizcarra.

Martin Vizcarra received the presidency one day after his 55th birthday, when most of Peruvians did not even knew his name, but since he assumed office he dedicated himself to touring almost daily remote towns never visited by a president.