Peru govt limps on as vote to impeach Kuczynski fails

Bloomberg

Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski survived a pell-mell impeachment effort over allegations that he lied about dealings with Brazilian construction company Odebrecht SA, which is at the center of the biggest corruption scandal in Latin America’s history.
After a congressional session that lasted more than 13 hours, lawmakers in the opposition-dominated chamber fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to declare the Wall Street veteran and former finance minister “morally incapable.” The president’s escape was narrow: 78 lawmakers voted for his impeachment, 19 against, and 21 abstained.
“Tomorrow, a new chapter in our history starts,” Kuczynski said in a tweet after the vote. “Reconciliation and reconstruction of our country: One strength. One Peru.”
The impeachment drive, which took less than a week from beginning to end, reinforced the perception that Peru’s politics are chaotic and unpredictable. That the opposition came so close to unseating a president in such a short period of time demonstrates the potency of the probe known as Operation Carwash, its Brazilian code name. Attention will now turn to how the 79-year-old Kuczynski will reorganize his government while fending off any renewed efforts to undermine his presidency that’s slated to last until 2021.
“We need to learn the political lesson from this,” said Vicente Zeballos, a lawmaker with the ruling Peruvians for Change party. He added that the president needs to make changes to his cabinet. “There needs to be a shake-up that raises consensus — a broad-based cabinet.”
Yet Kuczynski has lost significant political capital, and will struggle to recover it, Eurasia Group analyst Maria Luisa Puig said before the vote. “A weak president and corruption allegations will hinder his government’s efforts to boost growth,” she said.
The political turbulence hit Peru just as the economy recovered from the freezing of civil-works projects amid the Odebrecht investigation, and destructive flooding in the country’s north. The government’s efforts to revive growth are focused precisely on attracting the sort of infrastructure investment that engendered the scandal.