Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Peru: President PPK resigns

Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski has quit over a vote-buying scandal.

He has denied wrongdoing but said on Wednesday that he did not want to be an obstacle to the country’s development.

Party leaders in Congress later agreed to accept President Kuczynski’s resignation. He had been facing an impeachment vote on Thursday.

Pressure has been growing after footage emerged of his allies offering opposition politicians financial rewards if they backed him in the vote.

Is he gone for good now?
Congress still has to vote on whether to accept President Kuczynski’s resignation. Lawmakers will meet on Thursday to discuss the issue and are expected to put it to a vote later on Thursday or Friday.
. . .
Mr Kuczynski has already been through one impeachment vote. In December, his opponents wanted to remove him for allegedly receiving illegal payments from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.

You can tell PPK’s resignation is bad news when you realize the Venezuelan communists celebrated with fireworks.

I don’t know what comes next. All I know is that LatAm news is an endless “shampoo rinse repeat” cycle of news in countries where people never learn.

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Peru: Fujimori going on trial . . . again

The BBC reports that Peru’s ex-President Alberto Fujimori has been ordered to stand trial for the 1992 killings of six farmers.

It comes just over a month after he was released from prison, where he was serving 25 years for human rights abuses and corruption.

The 79-year-old was given a pardon on health grounds but the court in the capital Lima says this does not apply to the new case.

Fujimori was president of Peru from 1990 to 2000. After faxing his resignation from Tokyo in 2000, he received citizenship from Japan, from where his parents had emigrated to Peru.

In 2005, Mr. Fujimori unexpectedly ended a self-imposed exile in Japan and traveled to Chile, apparently intending to return to Peru and try for a political comeback. But he was arrested soon after he arrived, and Peru quickly sought extradition.

Nine years ago,

Fujimori found guilty of ordering killings and kidnappings during the war with “Shinning Path” Maoist guerrillas, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Fujimori is the first democratically-elected Latin American president to be found guilty of human rights crimes in his own country.

Fujimori was tried for ordering the 1991 killings at the Barrios Altos area of Lima, where 15 people died, and the killings at La Cantuta University in 1992, along with the kidnappings of journalist Gustavo Gorriti, a correspondent for Spanish daily El País, and businessman Samuel Dyer, who were abducted to the basement of the army’s Intelligence Service.

There were street protests in Lima last December when he was granted a pardon over health issues. Last month he was released from prison where he was serving the 25-year sentence.

Japan Times has covered Fujimori over the decades.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

Trending at Bad Blue.

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Around the Hemisphere

I’m enjoying the Season with family, but here are a few headlines,

ARGENTINA
Say what? Argentina’s pro-business President Mauricio Macri is inviting low-cost airlines to invest in Argentina’s uncompetitive air-travel market, as long as they do something they do nowhere else: keep their prices high.

BOLIVIA
Germany and Switzerland to help build coast-to-coast railway in South America.

Bolivian President Evo Morales visited Switzerland to sign an agreement to construct a railway line across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Supporters say the project will boost trade and create jobs.

HONDURAS
Honduras Opposition Candidate Concedes Election After U.S. Backs President Juan Orlando Hernández

PERU
PPK pardoned Fujimori; now Police in Peru have fired tear gas and clashed with thousands of protesters angry at the authorities’ decision to pardon ex-President Alberto Fujimori.

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST,
Guatemala follows US in planning Israel embassy move

Guatemala, along with 12 other countries, had their embassies in Jerusalem until 1980, when they moved them to Tel Aviv after Israel annexed East Jerusalem, in a move not recognised internationally. All other countries still have their embassies in Tel Aviv.

Guatemala and Israel have a long history of political, economic and military ties. The Central American country is also a major recipient of US aid – something which Donald Trump threatened to cut to states that voted in favour of the UN resolution.

Israel is in talks with more than 10 countries — including some in Europe — about potentially moving their respective embassies to Jerusalem, according to officials.

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Peru: Global Witness report on timber trafficking

Global Witness investigation tracks one ship

Report Exposes Inner Workings of Timber Trafficking in Peru

The report, released on November 9 by investigative watchdog group Global Witness, tells the story of the most high-profile anti-timber trafficking operation in Peruvian history: the November 2015 attempted seizure of illegal timber from the ship Yacu Kallpa as it was anchored in the Amazon River near the city of Iquitos.
. . .
By the time they had finished their verification, investigators had established that 96 percent of the cargo — more than 9,500 square meters — was “not of legal origin.

False certificates of origin, abuse of designated “local forests,” corrupt forestry consultants and more; read the whole thing.

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The Peru-Ecuador border wall

You probably didn’t know about this wall:
Peru has demanded that Ecuador stop construction work on a wall that its neighbor is building on the border between the two countries

The border has long been a source of tensions between the two Andean countries. Decades of tension descended into open military confrontation in 1995 which lasted three years before a peace agreement was signed.

The Peruvian government claims that the construction of the wall violates the terms of the agreement, in which the two countries agreed to leave a space of 10 meters on either side of the canal free from any building construction.

Ecuador has put aside $4.4 million for the four-meter-tall border wall construction, which is expected to be concluded in September. Local Ecuadorian official Manuel Zumba told AFP the barrier complies to all agreements and is supposed to fight contraband and won’t hinder movement of people as the wall construction is part of a project to regenerate the area, reviving trade and tourism.

Add some solar panels, and you got the art of the deal!

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Peru beats Uganda

An interesting article on what Peru has done well,

Why foreign investors choose Peru and not, erm, Uganda?

And yes, Peru’s recent economic burst can be attributed to high commodity prices and massive Chinese spending. But herein lies the kernel of Peru’s success. Institutions and reforms were implemented prior to the commodity boom, ensuring Peru could reap the full benefit of the price surge.

A rigorous programme of trade liberalisation and business friendly policies, including a complete overhaul of the mining sector in the early-2000s, helped boost investments and exports of copper and iron ore. Strengthening crucial institutions such as the tax authority and the regulatory regime have institutionalised reforms, encouraging economic diversity and deepening accountability.

The next wave of sectoral reform – following mining – is already under way in agriculture. This has spurred widespread innovation and has transformed a country of subsistence farmers known for its discovery of the potato into a globally competitive agribusiness. Peru is the world’s leading exporter of asparagus, the second largest exporter of avocados and a major producer of coffee, grapes and a wide range of other fruits and vegetables. Agricultural exports of Peru, a nation of 31-million, totalled nearly $6-billion in 2016. By comparison, Uganda’s agriculture exports, making up 80% of its total exports, were just $1.8-billion.

Read the whole thing.

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Colombia: Magdalena River dredging project suspended over Odebrecht

The project to make the Magdalena River in Colombia more navigable has been suspended:
Odebrecht Bribery Plea Muddies Colombia’s Big River Project. Channelization of Magdalena River stalled over corruption fears, thwarting country’s ambitious infrastructure plans

A string of gritty river towns along Colombia’s mightiest river have waited years for mounds of silt to be dredged from the waterway, a project that was supposed to start last year and bolster growth in Latin America’s fourth-largest economy.

But the $862-million contract to make 565 miles of the Magdalena River more navigable went mostly to Brazilian firm Odebrecht SA, whose explosive admission that it paid extensive bribes to land infrastructure projects led Colombian regulators last month to suspend the river works. That contract, which promised to triple river cargo, was the cornerstone of a now troubled $25-billion infrastructure initiative to build new highways, airports and ports that would modernize a country bedeviled by its rugged terrain.

The Odebrecht corruption investigation has tied up hundreds of infrastructure projects in the hemisphere: Odebrecht Mess Leaves Devastation Trail From Andes to Caribbean, among them

Peru’s grandest infrastructure project. The 1,025-kilometer (637-mile) Gasoducto Sur Peruano was meant to climb from Cuzco’s jungle gas fields to nearly 5,000 meters (16,405 feet) above sea level and then back down. Only 33 kilometers of pipe were in the ground before bribery allegations ended Odebrecht’s access to funds, prompting the government to terminate the contract last month.

Peru is particularly affected,

Nowhere is the scandal more damaging than in Peru where President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski is struggling to make good on his promise to boost growth by investing in infrastructure. Cancellation of Odebrecht’s pipeline contract set back a $70-billion infrastructure plan. Other projects have slowed under added scrutiny. Finance Minister Alfredo Thorne was forced to shave a percentage point off his growth forecast for 2017.

The BBC has a brief summary, Brazil’s Odebrecht corruption scandal

UPDATE
Trending at BadBlue.

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Peru: Woman scrambles out of a mudslide

Incredible strength and a will to live,
Peru flooding: woman scrambles out of vast mudslide – video

A woman stumbles across rafts of debris to make it to safety after being caught in a huge mudslide that crashed through the outskirts of Lima. Media reports in Peru said Evangelina Chamorro Díaz, 32, escaped without serious injury. “She is a little confused, but she is very well and will recover because she is a warrior and thank God nothing serious happened,” health minister Patricia Garcia said after visiting Díaz on Thursday. Several days of unusually heavy rains have killed at least a dozen people in the country.

Video starts right away (below the fold)

[Read more…]

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