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The Board of Speakers of Peru’s Congress held an urgent meeting Wednesday to discuss videos showing the president’s allies trying to buy votes of other congresspeople to avoid his impeachment.
At a press conference after their meeting the lawmakers urged President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to present his resignation as soon as possible and before the vote on his impeachment that is due to take place on Thursday.
The news came hours after the secretary general of Peru's ruling party Peruanos Por el Kambio (Peruvians for Change), or PPK, Salvador Heresi asked Kuczynski to resign the post "for dignity".
"What we've seen in the videos released yesterday is shameful and seriously affects our democracy," Heresi said in a message on his Twitter account Wednesday morning.
The news comes just a day before a vote on his impeachment was due to take place in Peru’s Congress to determine whether or not to impeach right-wing Kuczynski over his ties with the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.
The vote was proposed by the opposition party Fuerza Popular, led by former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the country’s former dictator Alberto Fujimori.
Kuczynski narrowly survived an impeachment motion in December over the same Odebrecht-related matter. He seems to have managed to dissuade some of the opposition lawmakers from voting on favor of his removal by promising to pardon Alberto Fujimori, which he did few days after the vote.
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