Kenji Fujimori has resigned from the Popular Force party led by his sister Keiko, saying the “party no longer has moral authority.”
Fujimori made the announcement after Odebrecht executive Jorge Barata testified to Peruvian district attorneys in Brazil yesterday that the company had given campaign funds in 2011 to all leading presidential candidates in Peru, including $1.2 million to Keiko Fujimori.
Keiko Fujimori, in a press conference today, has denied receiving any money from Odebrecht, and has called on her campaign manager, Jaime Yoshiyama, to explain the source of their campaign funds in 2011.
Kenji’s resignation comes as no surprise, and the timing of this latest Odebrecht bribery information was useful as a backdrop for his “principled” decision. In the past month, he had suggested breaking away from the party and forming an independent bench with several party members. He had already received the support of his mother, former congresswoman Susana Higuchi, for his faction within the Fujimorista party. As a candidate to Congress in the general elections in 2016 for Popular Force, he received the highest number of votes of any lawmaker.
Party lawmakers were quick to criticize him for disloyalty. Hector Becerril said it was Kenji who had no moral authority, calling him “the son and spokesman for President Kuczynski.”
In December, Kenji led nine of his party’s lawmakers to buck the party’s determination to oust President Kuczynski and join him in voting against the motion. Their vote broke the party’s majority in Congress and saved Kuczynski’s presidency.
Although in opinion polls a majority believe Kenji’s decision led to the presidential pardon of his father, Alberto Fujimori, within his party the move earned him a 120-day suspension from the party, and in late January the party leadership recommended he be expelled, along with lawmakers Maritza Garcia and Bienvenido Ramirez. Earlier in 2017, Kenji had been suspended for 60 days for not toeing the party line on another issue.
Keiko and Kenji Fujimori have been jostling for leadership since before the presidential elections in 2016 —Kenji did not turn up at his polling booth to vote— although many political analysts have doubted that the animosity was much more than play-acting, part of a plan in which former President Alberto Fujimori, now pardoned, would bring the siblings together and all three would lead the party.
