Peru | Leader set to face enemies before impeachment vote

A protester holds up fake money during an anti-corruption march

President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski will testify before Peruvian opposition lawmakers intent on throwing him out of office in a sudden impeachment proceeding that threatens to make him the region’s first president to be ousted over the Odebrecht corruption scandal.

The 79-year-old former Wall Street banker is in a fight for his political survival after an opposition-led investigative committee revealed documents showing the Brazilian construction giant at the center of Latin America’s largest corruption scandal made USD782,000 in payments to his private consulting firm a decade ago. Some of the payments overlap with years that Kuczynski spent as a government minister.

Kuczynski has denied any wrongdoing, stating in repeated appeals to the public that he left control of his firm in the hands of a business partner and knew nothing of the Odebrecht contract.

Analysts worry the impeachment vote could usher in a new period of uncertainty for Peru, which is one of South America’s most politically volatile nations. The vote is scheduled to come just eight days after the Odebrecht documents were first disclosed and is being pushed by the opposition Popular Force party led by Keiko Fujimori, who is the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori and who narrowly lost to Kuczynski in last year’s presidential election.

“That they would impeach the president is not an unthinkable thing,” said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard University political scientist who has spent years studying Peru. “It’s that they would do it in a week without serious investigation, without a serious process of public debate.”

High-ranking politicians across Latin America are being charged and sentenced to jail for taking bribes from Odebrecht. In a 2016 plea deal with the U.S. Justice Department, the construction giant admitted to paying nearly $800 million to politicians, their campaigns and political parties in return for lucrative public works contracts that earned the company some $3.3 billion in profits. MDT/AP