Peruvian President Castillo avoids impeachment in Congress vote
Peru: Peru’s President Pedro Castillo avoided impeachment by an oppositiondominated Congress on Monday, bringing to a close the second bid to unseat him since he rose to power eight months ago.
Following a parliamentary debate that lasted more than eight hours, 55 legislators voted in favor of Castillo’s impeachment, 54 voted against, and 19 abstained.
Eighty-seven votes would have been required to impeach the leftist leader, whom the opposition accused of corruption and moral incapacity.
“The motion to declare the presidency of the republic vacant has not been approved,” said opposition leader Maria del Carmen Alva, who heads Congress, after the vote held at around 11pm (04h00 GMT Tuesday).
“I hail the fact that common sense, responsibility and democracy have won,” Castillo wrote on Twitter after the vote.
“I call on all (legislators) to turn the page and to work together to solve the great challenges the country faces,” he added.
The result of the vote was not a surprise: though the conservative opposition dominates Congress, it did not have a large enough majority to force Castillo out on its own.
“To be honest we don’t have the votes,” said Norma Yarrow from the right-wing Advance Country party prior to the vote.
“We don’t see this as a defeat,” said legislator Alejandro Munante, who had spearheaded the impeachment bid against Castillo.
It was the second time in his eight months as Peru’s leader that Castillo faced an impeachment bid in a country with a recent history of ousting its presidents.
It was also the sixth time since 2017 that Congress opened impeachment proceedings against a sitting president.
The right-wing Pedro Pablo Kuczynski survived one but resigned in 2018 before Congress opened a second debate.
Centrist Martin Vizcarra also survived an attempt to remove him before he was finally ousted in 2020.
Castillo faced a similar impeachment bid in December, and has been under fire from the opposition and some of the Peruvian media in the months since then. The opposition had accused the 52-year-old former schoolteacher of moral incapacity and tolerating alleged corruption in his inner circle.