Bogotá, Colombia – Peru’s presidential election has been upturned by news that the country’s public prosecutor is seeking a jail term for Roberto Sánchez, one of two candidates set to compete in next month’s run-off.
The public prosecutor announced on Tuesday it is seeking a five year and four month jail term for alleged irregularities in campaign donations to the Together for Peru (Juntos por el Perú) party between 2020 and 2021.
The announcement has fuelled existing concerns about the integrity of the elections and the state of Peru’s democracy, which has faced a spate of crises in recent years.
If successfully prosecuted, Sánchez would be unable to stand in the election set for June 7.
The candidate denies the accusations, saying, “I proved that I never made personal use of the party’s financial resources, and that is why the alleged fraud as a serious crime was dismissed by the Judiciary through a court ruling.”
The timing of the release of the documents, leaked to the press on May 12 and formally unsealed the next day, has raised suspicions in some quarters of attempted electoral manipulation. The documents show that the prosecutor’s resolution was issued on January 15 but was only made public this week, as Sánchez closes in on advancing to run-off elections following a lengthy vote count.
Jo-Marie Burt, from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), says the charges may signal that an elite coalition in congress is seeking to subvert the election process to avoid the chance of Sánchez coming to power.
“One cannot help but see this as a politically motivated move designed to remove him as a viable candidate,” she told Latin America Reports.
Sánchez, a leftist former trade minister, is set to face off with Keiko Fujimori, the right-wing politician who has dominated the political scene in Peru for a decade but has been defeated in each of the last three presidential run-offs.
WOLA’s Burt sees the hand of Keiko Fujimori behind this intervention: “The [prosecutor’s office] is now run by people who are closely allied with Keiko Fujimori and her allies. Hence the concern that this action against Sánchez is politically motivated.”
The public prosecutor’s decision to seek a jail term for Sánchez is just the latest in a series of moves which have fuelled concerns about the integrity of Peru’s judiciary.
While the prosecutor’s office is technically independent from the executive and legislative branches, it has been clouded by accusations of politicization since the accession of Attorney General Tomás Gálvez, considered an ally of Fujimori.
In November last year the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judiciary and lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, raised concerns about the ousting of Attorney General Delia Espinoza, who had been actively pursuing investigations into links between organized crime and legislators.
“Judicial independence is not optional. It is the foundation of democracy,” she said, after congress voted to bar Espinoza from office for ten years.
Espinoza’s replacement by Gálvez – who has been under investigation for links to organized crime in the Cuellos Blancos del Puerto influence peddling scandal – deepened fears for the integrity of the judiciary in Peru. In January this year, he announced that three major corruption investigation units, including the one investigating the Cuellos Blancos case, were being closed down.
Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator claimed at the time this “constitutes an institutional breakdown that seriously weakens the fight against impunity by jeopardizing ongoing investigations.”
Featured image description: Roberto Sánchez at a campaign rally.
Featured image credit: Roberto Sánchez via Facebook.
