The Presidential Succession in Peru: Three Presidents in Seven Days

César Landa

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

Democracy is the bedrock of the constitutional state under the rule of law, a state whose purpose is to protect fundamental rights and maintain checks on the exercise of power. At present, however, the model of semi-presidential democracy established by the Peruvian Constitution is marked by significant tensions between opposing parties in Parliament and the President of the Republic. This antagonism explains—but does not justify—the declaration of removal from office of President Martín Vizcarra on 9 November 2020, on the grounds of alleged moral unfitness due to the investigations being conducted by the Attorney General’s Office. This declaration is being willfully misused to circumvent the Constitution, which prohibits the impeachment and removal of the President of the Republic from office during his mandate except for one of four reasons set out in article 117.  The tactic has succeeded due to President Vizcarra’s lack of a parliamentary majority to support him.

Peru’s twentieth-century military and civil-military coups d’état are now being replaced by unlawful attempts to remove presidents from office through parliamentary channels in the twenty-first century. Those unlawful attempts are perpetrated by the opportunistic unification of a conservative and populist parliamentary bloc against the liberal forces of the executive branch. As proof, we need look no further than the attempted removal from office of former President Pedro Kuczynski, who was elected for the 2016-2021 period, due to his alleged receipt of illegal kickbacks from the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht, which is also embroiled in similar scandals in other Latin American countries. President Kuczynski was nevertheless able to survive the first attempt to remove him from office in December 2017, after placating the parliamentary faction led by Keiko Fujimori by granting a presidential pardon to her father, former President Alberto Fujimori. However, a second attempt to remove Kuczynski from office was launched in March 2018, following the revelation of secretly recorded conversations in which the president could be heard trying to dissuade members of Parliament from voting en bloc with the Fujimorista party. Kuczynski was given an ultimatum: resign or be removed from office. In the end, he opted to resign.

Following Kuczynski’s departure, Vice President Martín Vizcarra took office as President of the Republic. He quickly moved to distance himself from the parliamentary forces that had catapulted him into the position, and launched a fight against political and judicial corruption. This soon led to an intense revival by Parliament of the use of checks and balances against the opposing branches of government—interpellations, censure, motions of no confidence, and the search for reasons to remove the president from office, among other things. The executive branch likewise came to increasingly rely on checks and balances —the call for the establishment of an extraordinary legislature, petitions to conduct a vote of confidence, and the constitutional referendum on the fight against corruption. After Parliament attempted to appoint six out of seven Constitutional Court judges, the executive branch proposed a vote of confidence on the reform of the election system for that court’s judges. This proposal was rejected by the parliamentary opposition bloc, thus giving the president grounds—due to the second vote of no confidence—to dissolve Parliament on 30 September 2019.

Parliament challenged this measure by bringing a suit before the Constitutional Court accusing President Vizcarra of interfering with parliamentary powers. The case was dismissed, however, after the Constitutional Court concluded that the dissolution of Parliament was not unconstitutional. New parliamentary elections were held on 26 January 2020, with one hundred and thirty new members taking office in the unicameral Parliament with a plurality of political parties, including representation by antisystem forces and others on the periphery of the system. Due to the severe public health, economic, and social crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the tension between Parliament and the executive branch was rekindled and exponentially heightened, especially after the president called a general presidential and parliamentary election for 11 April 2021, and the National Electoral Board declared that current members of Parliament could not be reelected by virtue of the constitutional reform approved by referendum.

That was the catalyst for the flood of accusations and parliamentary investigations initiated against Vizcarra for allegedly hiring a close associate, Richard Swing, for a position in a government ministry. Parliament then revealed a series of audio recordings of conversations between the president and his administrative staff on how to respond to questions from the Attorney General’s Office. Bringing these conversations to light led the president to be denounced for everything from obstruction of justice to falsification of information. The motion for removal for office was admitted for a vote on 18 September 2020, but the eighty-seven votes required for removal from office according to parliamentary regulations were not met, with just thirty-two votes in favor, seventy-eight against, and fifteen members of Parliament abstaining.   

The public, well aware of the news stories about the audio recordings of the president’s conversations, was in favor of an independent investigation, although the option of removal from office was unpopular. Instead, public opinion held that the president should be held fully accountable in accordance with law after concluding his mandate on 28 July 2021. Despite this, the antisystem, conservative, religious, and center-right forces in the parliamentary opposition bloc joined together to move forward with a second, fraudulent petition for the removal of the president from office, this time based on a journalistic exposé of President Vizcarra’s time as governor of the Moquegua region. Primarily, Vizcarra was accused of accepting bribes in 2015 from contractors looking to be awarded the Pasto Grande hospital project. This matter is currently under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office, just like all the other denunciations against the president.

As on the previous occasion, President Vizcarra appeared before Parliament to answer questions. This time, his highly convincing defense arguments included the fact that, in addition to himself, there were sixty-eight members of Parliament under investigation by the Attorney General’s Office—including Edgar Alarcón, one of the leaders of the bid to remove Vizcarra from office, who was facing a criminal complaint with a potential sentence of up to twelve years in prison. Nevertheless, Parliament had not opened constitutional proceedings for removal from office against any of them, as they had against President Vizcarra.

The parliamentary deliberations were marked by clear efforts by members from different parties to protect their own interests, leading to a rushed vote to remove the president from office, with one hundred and five votes in favor, nineteen against, four abstentions, and two absent. The President of Parliament, Manuel Merino, declared the removal of President Vizcarra from office. As a result, it was the President of Parliament himself who acceded to the office of interim President of the Republic, a move that was decried by the public, who took to the streets in protest all across the country. Despite President Vizcarra’s declaration in his final public statements that he would not challenge Parliament’s arbitrary decision in the courts after he left the Palace of Government, the Peruvian public and the country’s institutions have condemned the usurpation of power.

The people of Peru, and especially the country’s youth, have taken to the streets daily to protest the arbitrary decision of the parliamentary majority bloc and defend the rule of law. The protests were repressed by the Merino administration, leaving two dead, over one hundred injured, and two disappeared. In response, both President Merino and the President of Parliament have resigned from their positions. After an attempt at a first parliamentary session was frustrated, a second session was called, resulting in the appointment of Francisco Sagastegui, a member of the democratic minority bloc, as President of Parliament. In accordance with the Constitution, Sagastegui will be sworn in as President of the Republic and serve until 28 July 2021.

The Constitutional Court has yet to rule on a jurisdictional proceeding filed by the executive branch against Parliament for the abuse of its power to remove the president from office on grounds of moral unfitness. Thus far, it has denied a preliminary injunction to halt the first attempt at removal from office, given that the necessary number of votes was not obtained. However, now that Vizcarra has been successfully removed from office, Merino’s resignation has been accepted, and Sagástegui’s appointment as President has been confirmed, the Constitutional Court is expected to legitimate these changes, upholding the political solution to the constitutional crisis in view of its public popularity. Regardless of that political solution, the court also has the duty to declare the unconstitutionality of Vizcarra’s removal from office.

César Landa is a former President of the Constitutional Court of Peru and a Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He is also a Vice President of the International Association of Constitutional Law.

Suggested citation: César Landa, ‘The Presidential Succession in Peru: Three Presidents in Seven Days’ IACL-AIDC Blog (10 December 2020) https://blog-iacl-aidc.org/2020-posts/2020/12/10/the-presidential-succession-in-peru-three-presidents-in-seven-days