PERUVIAN SOLONS IMPEACH PRESIDENT MARTIN VIZCARRA

Peruvian lawmakers voted to impeach President Martín Vizcarra, accusing him of taking bribes years ago and poorly handling the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Franklin Bruceno reported for the Associated Press (AP).

The vote marked the latest chapter of political turmoil in a country with the world’s highest per-capita COVID-19 mortality rate. The president denied any wrongdoing in a forceful speech before Congress but lawmakers said they didn’t believe him. They also lambasted his response to the virus, pointing to rising poverty, deadly oxygen shortages and the country’s misguided use of rapid antibody tests.

Vizcarra is accused by opposition legislators of taking over $630,000 in exchange for two construction projects when he was governor of a small province in southern Peru from 2011 to 2014. The claims come from construction managers themselves accused of corruption and who could get reduced jail time in exchange for the information. Prosecutors are investigating the allegations but have not charged Vizcarra.

Peru has experienced one of the world’s worst virus outbreaks, with at least 34,879 deaths and 922,333 infections in the nation of 32 million. The high fatality and infection rate are the culmination of years of underinvestment in public health, poverty and costly decisions by officials in the early days of the pandemic, like massively deploying rapid antibody tests to diagnose cases even though they can’t identify infection early during an illness.