Valentín Paniagua

Valentín Toribio Demetrio Agustin Paniagua Corazao (23 September 1936 – 16 October 2006) was a Peruvian lawyer and politician who briefly served as 55th President of Peru from 2000 to 2001.

In August 1955, as a student leader, he was one of the founders of the Frente Universitario Reformista Independiente, a social-Christian reform organization, opposed to landowners' rights, to the communists and to the APRA.

Paniagua became a member of the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), which was best aligned to his Roman Catholic and reformist ideals.

In June 1963 he was elected to Congress as a representative for Cusco in the joint list of Acción Popular (AP) and PDC, an alliance that catapulted the leader of AP, Fernando Belaúnde, to the presidency of the country.

Despite Paniagua's youth, Belaúnde appointed him Minister of Justice and Cult in his first government.

In 1966, a section of the PDC led by the then-mayor of Lima, Luis Bedoya Reyes, cut ties with the leadership of Héctor Cornejo Chávez and founded the Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC).

However, Paniagua remained in the ranks of the government.

The coup d'état of General Juan Velasco Alvarado on 3 October 1968, sent Paniagua out of Congress and for some years he was left out of politics.

His loyalty to the constitutional legality of Belaúnde led him to abandon the PDC on 27 July 1974, in protest of its acceptance of the military government.

Some time later he became a member of AP, and kept on a civil protest against Velasco and his 1975 successor, General Francisco Morales-Bermúdez.

In the elections of 18 May 1980, he was re-elected to Congress, and his party boss, Belaúnde, won his second presidency.

In July 1982, after being part of the Constitutional Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, he became President of the Chamber of Deputies.

On 10 May 1985, he became Minister of Education.

In October of that year he resigned to return to his parliamentary activities.

He was given the Orden del Sol in the Gran Cruz grade.

The defeat of AP in the 14 April 1985 elections and arrival to power of Alan García's APRA sent Paniagua to the opposition.

Over the following five years he remained a strong foe of the government and worked as a prestigious lawyer in academic and political circles, as well as a professor of constitutional law at the universities of San Marcos, Femenina del Sagrado Corazón and Pontificia Católica.

In the national elections of 1990, together with most of Acción Popular, Paniagua supported the candidacy of Mario Vargas Llosa for president.

When Alberto Fujimori was elected President, Paniagua was part of the opposition, but became a strong opponent after Fujimori's auto-coup in April 1992.

Elected President of Congress on 16 November 2000, he ascended to the presidency as incumbent Alberto Fujimori and both his Vice Presidents resigned by 22 November 2000.

Fujimori was reelected once again in the controversial national elections of 2000.

Paniagua was a prominent member of the opposition.

On 14 September the nation was rocked by evidence that Fujimori's security chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, had bribed an opposition congressman to switch to Fujimori's party, Perú 2000.

On 15 November 2000, a majority of the Congress dismissed the acting President of the Peruvian Congress, a Fujimori supporter.

After an internal discussion among the political forces, Paniagua was elected the new President of the Peruvian Congress.

He was elected because all parties considered him to have a fair but strong character, needed in such times of crisis.

A few days later, Fujimori submitted his resignation by fax.

However, Congress voted 62-9 to reject Fujimori's resignation and remove him from office on grounds that he was "permanently morally unfit."

According to the line of succession, First Vice President Francisco Tudela should have succeeded to the presidency, but he had also resigned a few days before after breaking with Fujimori.

Second Vice President Ricardo Márquez then claimed the presidency.

Due to Fujimori shortening his presidential term in order to expire on 28 July 2001, Paniagua's main task was to oversee the new elections.

Paniagua was a longtime member of Popular Action, serving as Secretary General and Party President.

Paniagua's father was born in Bolivia but lived most of his life in Peru.

Valentín Paniagua was born in Cusco and attended high school at Salesian School of Cusco.

He went on to study law at the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad in Cusco, and subsequently transferred to the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, where he completed his law degree.

In the following years, he worked in his private practice as a lawyer and started a political career.

In addition, he completed a master's degree in political science at the University of Indiana.

Fujimori's support evaporated at this point, and he was forced to announce he would step down after new presidential elections in 2001.

An OAS mission was sent to deal with the political crisis.

Fujimori's allies lost control of Congress after numerous defections to the opposition.