Peru: Lima mayor facing recall vote on March 17; former mayor may have led efforts on recall

Lima mayor Susana Villaran is facing a March 17 recall vote half-way through her term, and there's some debate over why. According to this Global Post article, Marco Tulio Gutierrez was responsible for the 400,000 signature-gathering effort. But he has refused to state who put up the 2 million soles ($770,000) to pay the gatherers. As a nice touch, they also gave away candy.

According to the piece, former mayor Luis Castaneda (who finished fifth in the presidential election last year) is leading the effort. One of the goals is that holding office would give him immunity from prosecution over the alleged payment in 2006 of 36 million Soles ($13.9 million) to Comunicore, a waste-management company run by a friend.