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| Affiliation | Popular Action |
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| <- |
2006-01-01 |
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| Name | Valentín Paniagua |
| Address |
, , Peru |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
September 23, 1936
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| Died | October 16, 2006
(70 years)
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| Contributor | 411 Name Removed |
| Last Modifed | BrentinCO
Sep 25, 2023 02:54pm |
| Tags |
Catholic -
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| Info | Valentín Toribio Demetrio Agustin Paniagua Corazao
Valentín Paniagua Corazao is a Peruvian Congressman. He was elected by the Peruvian Congress to serve as interim President of the country after Alberto Fujimori resigned in November 2000. His main task was to organize fresh elections, after which, in July 2001, he stood down from the presidency.
Paniagua is a member and currently Secretary General of the Acción Popular party.
Paniagua's father was born in Bolivia but lived most of his life in Peru. Valentín Paniagua was born in Cuzco, where he went to high school at the Colegio Nacional de Ciencias. Then, he went on to study Law at the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad in Cuzco and later at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. He finished there specializing in Constitutional Law. In the following years, he worked in his private practice as lawyer and also started a political career.
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 the landowners right, to the communists and to the APRA. Paniagua became a member of the Christian Democratic 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 Cuzco in the joint list of Acción Popular (AP) and PDC, an alliance that catapulted the leader of AP, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, to the Presidency of the country. Despite his youth, Belaúnde appointed him Minister of Justice and Culture in his first government.
In 1966, a section of the PDC lead by the then major of Lima, Luis Bedoya Reyes, cut ties with the leadership of 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 October 3, 1968, took 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 July 27, 1974, in protest for 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 May 18, 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 May 10, 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 April 14, 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 the academic and political circles, as well as 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, 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 once again in the controversial National Elections of 2000, he was a prominent member of the opposition. When Alberto Fujimori resigned in November 2000, Parliament was in charge of selecting his successor. This was possible due to the resignation of the First Vice-president Francisco Tudela a few days before. Also, Parliament refused to recognize the Second Vice-president Ricardo Márquez as Interim President, since the Opposition considerated him a Hard-liner Fujimorista.
Supported even by Fujimori's Party (Perú 2000), he was elected (after defeating Perú Posible candidate Carlos Ferrero in the congressional vote) President of the Peruvian Congress, and elected to serve as interim President of the country.
One of his first actions as President was the appointment of Javier Pérez de Cuéllar as Prime Minister of the country and Minister of Foreign Affairs, in order to avoid the increasing political pressure from the different political parties.
One of his first actions as President of the Republic was the establishment of a Unity Government and National Reconciliation that received the support of almost all the political parties of the time. He then proceeded and formed a moderate Government Cabinet, which involved several ex-fujimoristas ministers, non-partisan Technicians and low-profile politicians. Also, he proceeded with the removal of the Military Commanders that were involved or have any type of political connection with Vladimiro Montesinos.
He was force to work with Fujimori's Perú 2000 party in Congress, since they still were the most important political organization (as minority, since it no longer have a majority). Also, during most of his period, an important number of the infamous Vladivideos were published and investigated, since most of them recorded corruptions act involving politicians, members of the cleric and important businessmen.
Also, he was involved in the derogation of much of the Anti-Terrorist legislation enforced by Fujimori, which allowed the re-trials of several members of Shining Path already in prison. In order to calm the public opinion, he claimed that this would only involve low-level convicted insurgents, and not the core of this organization (like Abimael Guzmán, leader of Shining Path and currently serving a life sentence in prison).
When his time as President of the Republic came to an end, he transferred the government to the democratically elected President and winner of the National Elections of 2001, Alejandro Toledo. In the same year, he was elected Secretary General of Acción Popular, in replacement of Fernando Belaúnde Terry, as national leader of the political organization.
According to a recent poll by the University of Lima in December 2005, Paniagua holds the third place.
For a brief period of time, it was speculated that the Peruvian Government would support his candidacy for Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) in the 2005 secretary general election. He declined this in order to participate in the 2006 elections.
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