LIVE: the impeachment trial against President Martín Vizcarra began in the Peruvian Congress and today it is resolved whether he will be removed from office

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE3KBKi20kg

The Peruvian Congress opened this Friday on final debate to remove President Martín Vizcarra accused of “permanent moral incapacity”For his apparent attempts to hide a minor case of corruption, a procedure that in principle does not have the necessary votes to expel the president from power.

Despite the fact that at first it was reported that Vizcarra would not attend the Chamber, finally the president appeared in the hemicycle just minutes before the start of the session.

Vizcarra was not legally obliged to participate in the impeachment trial and had given signs that he did not intend to go to the Chamber after assuring yesterday Thursday that the country should not be distracted by “sterile discussions” and “secondary things.”

However, and despite the fact that he even fired his lawyer Roberto Pereira at the door of the Government Palace when he left for Congress, Vizcarra appeared at the last minute, without a tie or presidential sash to “give a signal to the population” that the most important thing “is to come and show your face.”

“I do not come. I haven’t done it before and I won’t do it now”Vizcarra announced at the beginning of the session. “Mrs. Karem Roca, in one of the audios, stated that the Navy did ‘suck’ the congressmen and here is the notarial letter that she sends denying that version,” said the head of state, while showing the letter before back off and give your defense attorney room.

NO VOTES

It is not known how long the session will last, in which the option to remove the president does not seem to be able to prosper.

Provisional calculations based on the public expressions of the parliamentary political parties and their leaders suggest that only one of the nine groups in the Chamber, Unión por el Perú, openly supports the dismissal.

That group has only 13 votes, and for Vizcarra to be removed, 87 affirmative votes are necessary.

Alliance for Progress (APP), who voted in favor of opening the impeachment, confirmed through the mouth of its leaders and spokespersons that does not support impeachment now, in the same way that Somos Perú, Fuerza Popular (the Fujimori party), and the Purple Party.

Popular Action and Podemos Peru, which were also enthusiastic promoters of the vacancy, now they do not seem willing to vote en bloc in favorWhile the evangelical Frepap party and the leftist Frente Amplio have not signaled their vote but are not expected to support the measure.

CONSTITUTIONAL COURT

The political trial of Vizcarra received the approval of the Constitutional Court on Thursday, which refused to suspend the process while the high court is issued on whether Congress has the power to use the argument of “moral incapacity” to remove the president.

That was a request from the Executive, which considers abusive the use of the concept “moral incapacity”, included in the Constitution but whose interpretation is so broad that it allows any pretext by Congress to remove a president.

The TC argued its refusal to suspend the plenary session because the “urgency” to postpone the session has been “diluted” precisely because several parliamentary benches announced that they would not support the measure.

However, several deputies allied with Vizcarra and members of the Government expressed their doubts about this position, since until the vote is finally taken, it will not be known how the process will turn out, underlining that the situation could change at any time.

“Regardless of the pronouncement by the political leaders, until the congressmen vote, we cannot be certain of their position, about what they really think about the vacancy. I heard some parliamentarians say that they have not yet defined their vote, despite the fact that their benches have expressly indicated that they do not“Said the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Ana Neyra in statements to the newspaper Trade.

THE SWING CASE

This dramatic political situation started last Thursday 10 when some secret recordings of Vizcarra were released apparently coordinating with his closest collaborators how to hide his ties with the singer Richard “Swing”, a controversial character whom the president had known since the 2016 election campaign.

Swing is being investigated for his multiple irregular contracts in the Ministry of Culture for hardly justifiable consulting issues since Vizcarra assumed the Presidency in 2018.

The Congress, dominated by an opposition that resists political and electoral reforms proposed by Vizcarra, among other issues of fighting corruption, found in that scandal the opportunity to tempt the presidential impeachment.

However, Vizcarra has revealed that the head of Congress, Manuel Merino, the main promoter of the vacancy, knocked on the doors of the armed forces and tried to form a government “in the shadows” before the impeachment process began.

Those actions by Merino sowed doubts throughout the process and reduced support, as well as the fact that the recordings proceeded with almost total security from Vizcarra’s secretary, Karem Roca, who acted for very unclear reasons, in what the president described as “treason.”

(With information from EFE)

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