Latin American Leader Flouts History With Bid to Step Down Early
9h ago
Carolina Wilson and John Quigley, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Latin America has long suffered from leaders who clung on to power at any cost, trampling democratic institutions in the process. Peru’s current leader is proposing the exact opposite.
After months of tussling with the opposition-controlled Congress over his anti-graft program, President Martin Vizcarra said in an interview that the best option is to call early presidential and parliamentary elections in 2020, in which he won’t be a candidate, to give the country a fresh start.
“There are extremists who say: ‘And why not close Congress?’ And others, ‘Why don’t we impeach the president?’”, Vizcarra said Wednesday at the Peruvian ambassador’s residence in New York. “Given those two options, the most responsible proposal is for the political class to step aside, so that there can be a new beginning,” Vizcarra said.
The opposition seems to disagree. Congress’s constitutional committee said it would vote Thursday on a proposal to reject Vizcarra’s early-election bill.
Peru has been gripped by political turmoil since the last election in 2016, when Pedro Pablo Kuczynski scraped through a runoff vote while his opponent, Keiko Fujimori, won a majority in Congress. Vizcarra took office roughly 18 months ago -- after Kuczynski quit on the eve of an impeachment vote.
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https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/latin-american-leader-flouts-history-with-bid-to-step-down-early-1.1321945