Thousands of Peruvians marched on Thursday to protest the president’s recent pardoning of former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori, calling for new general elections as a graft scandal ensnares established politicians.
The demonstrations capped a head-spinning week in which President Pedro Pablo Kuczysnki warned about a new rise of Fujimori’s authoritarian movement, only to pardon him three days later after Fujimori’s loyalists in Congress saved him from an impeachment bid.
Waving Peruvian flags and chanting “down with the corrupt,” protesters called the pardon payback for keeping Kuczynski in power.
“I’m marching against this outrage, this insult that we feel now that the dictator Fujimori has been pardoned,” said Milagros Reboyo, a 26-year-old university student at a march in Lima.
The Christmas Eve pardon cleared Fujimori’s convictions for graft and human rights abuses 12 years into a 25-year prison sentence, and shields him from a pending trial for a 1992 death squad massacre.