It Was fitting that this week's denouement to Alberto Fujimori's decade of increasingly authoritarian rule should be played out in the Congress. In 1992, Mr Fujimori sent tanks to shut down the parliament, arranging a slimmer and more subservient replacement in a new constitution. Spuming a letter of resignation faxed by Mr Fujimori from a Tokyo hotel room, Congress on November 21st voted by 62 to 9 to declare the president "permanently morally unfit" for the office. With both his vice-presidents (Peru has two) having resigned as well, the next day Congress did as the constitution requires, and elected its own speaker, Valentin Paniagua, as Peru's caretaker president.
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