Through 16 years of impeachments and scandal, Julio Velarde, Peru’s central bank’s president, has presided over a remarkably resilient economy. But the country’s constitution now threatens to undo those achievements. Know more:
A protest against then-President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s pardon of former autocrat Alberto Fujimori in 2018.THROUGH 16 years of impeachments and scandal, Julio Velarde, Peru’s central bank’s president, has presided over a remarkably resilient economy. But the country’s constitution now threatens to undo those achievements.
“These rules of the game need to change,” Velarde said in a rare interview. “But how do you do that? In one case congress loses some of its power, in the other case the president loses some power.” Economic growth has slowed to a trickle after booming for much of this century. Investment in the construction of new mines is at a multi-year low and Peru is expected to lose its title as the world’s No. 2 copper producer by 2027. Mass anti-government protests wrecked the economy earlier this year. Peru’s economic success earlier this century did not prevent its underfunded public health system from shattering during the pandemic, leading to the worst per capita death rate worldwide.
Before 1992, Peru’s 180-seat House of Representatives and 60-seat Senate had to agree on the terms of impeachment before booting the head of state. But under Fujimori’s constituent assembly, lawmakers did away with the Senate. On the strength of his Wall Street experience, Kuczynski won the presidency in 2016 by 0.2 percentage points over Keiko Fujimori, Alberto’s daughter and the leader of the opposition-held congress. It soon fired Kuczynski’s education and economy ministers, and in December of 2017, a group of Keiko-led lawmakers initiated impeachment proceedings against the president, alleging he had done business with Odebrecht SA, a construction company known for bribing political leaders across Latin America.
Kuczynski said he regrets not dissolving Congress, which would have avoided his impeachment. But he doesn’t think presidents should have such power or that congress should have the power to “fire a president without a proper impeachment process.” His dealings with Odebrecht are now the subject of a money laundering investigation.SINCE Kuczynski became president, the average tenures of the top three ministers—prime minister, finance minister and mining minister—have halved.
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