Former Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra, sentenced to 14 years in prison, stated that he was imprisoned due to "revenge" from his political rivals. He called for voting in the next general elections in 2026 for his brother, who is replacing him as the presidential candidate.
"Peru is first and no one will silence us," Vizcarra stated on social media X, from the courtroom where the verdict was read.
The former president and leader of the "Perú Primero" party, despite being one of the top contenders in the polls, despite three congressional disqualifications and now a fourth nine-year sentence handed down by this court, maintains high popularity for having confronted the conservative forces that dominate the Peruvian Congress.
Vizcarra was sentenced to 14 years in prison for passive bribery, as the court found that he had received over 2.3 million soles (about $700,000) in bribes while serving as governor of the southern Moquegua region (2011-2014), before becoming president.
"My brother Mario Vizcarra will continue this fight for you. Are you so afraid of Vizcarra?" the former president wrote.
"Perú Primero" called on citizens "not to normalize abuse or persecution" and to vote in the 2026 elections to recover the institutions and "elect those who truly work for the country."
"What happened is not an act of justice, but a political retaliation driven by a mafia pact that has captured the Executive, the Congress, and the judicial system to persecute and silence those who dare to defend the people," the party stated.
"They have sentenced me for confronting the mafia pact," the former head of state said.
In this regard, "Perú Primero" issued a communiqué expressing its "firm rejection" of the sentence handed down to the party's founder.
Fearing the verdict on Wednesday, Vizcarra had stepped down as his party's presidential candidate and was replaced by his brother Mario Vizcarra, who will run for president with the mission of politically rehabilitating the now-convicted former head of state.
The political parties that control the Parliament, including fujimorism, are the ones Vizcarra calls the "mafia pact" and who removed him from office in 2020 after the first signs of corruption were revealed during his tenure as regional governor, which the former president interpreted as revenge for his dissolution of Congress in 2019 after opposing his political and judicial reforms," the former head of state noted in another social media post minutes before his arrest.
"They have vacated me. And now they are putting me in jail. But they will not break me."
"Today they try to silence one, but they cannot silence millions."
