President dodges Impeachment

LIMA, PERU >> President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s troubles are far from over despite having dodged impeachment over ties to the Brazilian construction giant implicated in Latin America’s biggest corruption scandal.

Peru’s leader still faces a distracting criminal investigation into his involvement with Odebrecht, potentially opening another chapter in the bribery scandal that has ended the careers of some of the region’s most prominent politicians. Kuczynski is due for questioning at the chief prosecutor’s office next week.

Opposition legislators, who control Congress, fell eight votes short of the two-thirds threshold needed to oust the president Thursday night following a half-day of impassioned debate.

The impeachment attempt still left Kuczynski weakened, but it also revealed divisions inside the opposition Popular Force party, which led the impeachment drive. Lawmaker Kenji Fujimori, brother of the party’s leader, abstained from the impeachment vote. Both Kenji and party leader Keiko Fujimori are children of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori.

Keiko Fujimori, 42, has tried to push a conservative political agenda while her brother has maintained amicable relations with Kuczynski and other opponents as he presses for the release of their father from prison.

Some lawmakers said Kuczynski won support in Congress by agreeing to free the former strongman, a charge the president and his supporters denied.