Deutsche Welle (English edition)
In corruption, Peru's new president faces uphill battle
Francisco Sagasti is Peru's new caretaker president. He faces the mammoth task of fighting systematic corruption that has paralyzed the South American country for years.
Francisco Sagasti is an experienced political strategist, consultant to the United Nations, the author of 25 books and an industrial engineer who once worked at the World Bank. And he's a man who isn't easily ruffled, perhaps because he was one of the hostages taken by Peru's MRTA guerrillas at the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1996.
Sagasti, Peru's new centrist president, has an impressive resume. He may just be the right person in the right place at the right time to moderate the transition until the next general election in April 2021.
However, the main reason he was chosen in the wake of the violent protests earlier this month was probably the fact that the 76-year-old politician with Austrian roots isn't suspected of corruption. That means a great deal in the Andean state.
Peruvians are demanding that the state finally deal with corruption, said political analyst Melissa Navarro Decades of rampant corruption
Peru's seven previous presidents were all either accused of corruption, indicted, arrested or jailed. From the most recent, Manuel Merino, to Martin Vizcarra, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Ollanta Humala, Alan Garcia, Alejandro Toledo, Alberto Fujimori — corruption is as much a part of Peruvian politics as the popular pisco brandy is a part of any good party.
"Corruption is everywhere in Peru; it affects all areas of society and life," said Mayte Dongo, a historian and political scientist at the Catholic University in Peru, adding that this is why the country has so many corrupt lawmakers. "It's simply a reflection of society."
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No less than 68 of the 130 current parliamentarians are under criminal investigation. Nothing illustrates better what keeps a large majority of them going than a remark made by parliamentarian Esther Saavedra in September 2019: "Yo estoy aqui por mi plata" — "I am here for my money."
"The parliamentarians who have been elected aren't the ones who have the interests of the people in mind, but those who have paid the most for the top positions on the list," said Dongo.
Watch video04:09Reactions in Peru after Merino resigns Sagasti faces uphill battle
"This is fantastic news; we did it," said Melissa Navarro, a political analyst and adviser to Sagasti's Morado Party, commenting on his appointment. "We are rewriting the history of Peru's independence 200 years later." She is convinced Sagasti, who managed to rise to power backed by a political alliance created just three years ago, will take the issue of corruption seriously.
Sagasti will be walking a fine line — constantly forced to seek new majorities in the fragmented parliament, as Morado only has a total of nine seats. He is, thanks to an antiquated constitutional clause, always in danger of being forced out of office if parliamentarians object to his policies. There are few places on Earth where the Chamber of Deputies is as powerful, and the president as powerless, as in Peru.
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Take Martin Vizcarra, the popular former president who also declared war on corruption, as an example — even though he himself was suspected of having accepted bribes worth more than half a million euros from a construction company as governor of the Moquegua
region between 2011 and 2014.
During his time in office, which came to an end earlier this month, Vizcarra wanted to lift parliamentary immunity and make it more difficult to reelect members of parliament. Worried about their futures, two thirds of the parliamentarians pushed through his resignation; Sagasti wasn't among them.
"Of course, Vizcarra is also said to have enriched himself, but there is every indication that the vote was a concerted action by a few members of parliament to get rid of him," said Navarro.
When asked what Sagasti can expect in his fight against corruption, a member of parliament was quick to come up with a new nickname: Don Quixote — the aging knight and hero of lost causes.