Haitians protest

Judge frees Keiko Fujimori:

Peru’s opposition leader Keiko Fujimori was freed by an appeals judge late Wednesday, a week after she was arrested in an ongoing money laundering investigation.

The daughter of former strongman Alberto Fujimori cried as the judge read aloud his ruling Wednesday night. Several critics heckled Fujimori as she left the courthouse.

She remains under investigation over some $1.2 million in undeclared financial contributions to her 2011 presidential campaign that were allegedly made by Odebrecht, the Brazilian construction firm at the heart of Latin America’s largest-ever graft scandal.

Fujimori narrowly lost to Pedro Pablo Kuczynski in the 2016 presidential runoff. But her party emerged with a majority of seats in congress.

A different judge recently ordered the elder Fujimori be returned to jail to finish a long sentence for human rights abuses. (AP)

Fujimori

Concerns over Bolsonaro rise:

The United States does not believe that far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro’s possible winning of the presidency in Brazil will threaten democracy in Latin America’s biggest country, a White House official said Wednesday.

Bolsonaro, an ex-army officer who has repeatedly expressed support for Brazil’s former dictatorship, is poised in the polls to win a second round of voting later this month.

But a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that “Brazil has very strong democratic institutions.”

“We’re not particularly concerned in that sense,” he told reporters. “We feel confident in the will of its (Brazil’s) people.” (AFP)

corruption:

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated against corruption Wednesday in Haiti, with some even shoving the unpopular president at a public ceremony.

Police fired in the air to get President Jovenel Moise away from a ceremony at which he laid flowers at the tomb of one of the destitute Caribbean country’s founding fathers.

People in the crowd threw themselves to the ground as the shots rang out.

Elsewhere, near the presidential palace, police fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators.

Tempers have been running high for weeks in Haiti, where some accuse the government of doing nothing to fight corruption. (AP)