Three presidents in one week: Peru's youth rise up in echoes of protest movements spreading across Latin America

Were it not for his parliamentary immunity, Edgar Alarcón might already be in custody awaiting trial.

But instead he was able to lead his lawmaker colleagues in ousting the country's popular, corruption-busting president.

The controversial impeachment vote has led to riots on the streets of Lima, and the Andean country is now on its third president in a week.

The youth-led protest movement that has emerged from the turmoil claims that politicians like Mr Alarcón moved to dislodge the president to protect themselves from his proposed anti-graft laws.

Mr Alarcón, the head of the powerful congressional oversight committee, himself faces prosecution for embezzlement and “illicit enrichment” during his previous, scandal-wracked service as comptroller general. 

He is variously accused of buying luxury cars worth nearly £100,000 despite his monthly salary of just £5,700, billing personal spending to his expense account, and authorising irregular payments to his girlfriend, who he had also managed to put on his office payroll.

Mr Alarcón is the rule rather than the exception in Peru’s legislature, which ordinary citizens have long regarded with contempt thanks to its never-ending scandals. 

Highlights have included one legislator drunkenly groping an airline stewardess, a former general accused of selling army diesel on the black market, and several lawmakers forcing congressional aides to hand over a percentage of their wages.

In fact, of the 130 members of the single-chamber body, 68 currently face open criminal investigations, for alleged crimes ranging from failing to pay child maintenance to asset laundering and homicide, a fact Mr Vizcarra pointed out during his defense. “Do they also have to leave their jobs because of an investigation that prosecutors have yet to conclude?” asked the beleaguered president to jeering from the lawmakers.

Of all the reforms pushed by Mr Vizcarra in his attempt to clean up public life here, the one that ran into the stiffest resistance was his proposal to end parliamentary immunity.

In Peru, members of Congress can be prosecuted but not detained while in office unless their colleagues vote to remove their immunity, something lawmakers rarely do out of what critics describe as a misplaced esprit de corps.

Ordinary Peruvians have a well-known saying for the phenomena, “Jaguar doesn’t eat jaguar.” In local slang, corrupt legislators are nicknamed after the Amazon’s apex predator, with even fierce ideological rivals from right and left usually abiding by this form of political omerta. 

It was Mr Vizcarra’s insistence on those reforms that led to his removal, by a 105-19 vote, on the vague constitutional grounds of “moral incapacity,” a 19th century term which legal experts insist refers to infirmity not alleged misconduct.

Mr Vizcarra was replaced by Manuel Merino, the little-known speaker of congress, who had plotted against the president. His government lasted just five days amid furious public protests and widespread international reluctance to recognize him as the constitutional head-of-state.

Mr Merino resigned last Sunday after violent clashes between protesters and police prompted 11 members of his cabinet to quit and the heads of the armed forces refused to attend an emergency meeting in the presidential palace.

Human rights prosecutors are now investigating Mr Merino, his prime minister and interior minister for murder and other abuses after police killed two protesters and wounded, dozens of others, several of whom remain in hospital with pieces of lead and even marbles still in their bodies. Amnesty International is among those alleging officers used live ammunition against the largely peaceful protesters. 

Polls now show 91 per cent of Peruvians opposed Mr Vizcarra’s ouster, while 37 per cent protested in some form – even as most want a serious and impartial investigation of the allegations against the ex-president. Congress’s approval is just 9 per cent.

The political turmoil comes amid one of the world’s most devastating Covid-19 outbreaks. Officially, Peru has had 943,917 cases and 35,446 deaths. But epidemiologists estimate as many as one in three of Peru’s 32 million population may have already had the disease, rising to one in two in the capital, Lima. 

After 24 hours of intense haggling, a chastened congress voted on Monday to replace Mr Merino as president with Francisco Sagasti, one of the handful of lawmakers who had voted against dismissing Mr Vizcarra.

A 76-year-old engineer and academic, Mr Sagasti is a centrist widely viewed as a paragon of probity. Although it remains unclear whether he will attempt to continue Mr Vizcarra’s reforms during the remaining eight months of the current presidential term, the fact that someone of his convictions is now president represents a near-total defeat for the lawmakers who ousted Mr Vizcarra.

For now, the millennial and Gen Z protesters who took to the streets en masse this month may have saved Peru’s fragile democracy. But they have yet to win the war against the endemic graft that hobbles economic development and facilitates injustice.

One of those protesters, Sébastien Eddowes, who was involved in a televised tug-of-war with police in downtown Lima after offices attempted to seize a huge Peruvian flag wielded by the demonstrators, believes that prosecuting Mr Merino will be just a first step to fixing the rot.

“Sagasti has solid democratic credentials,” says Mr Eddowes, a 32-year-old professor and playwright. “But I’m not sure how representative he is. He is conciliatory, but is that what Peru needs right now?”