A Brief History
On March 23, 2018, the President of Peru, Pedro Kuczynski, resigned in disgrace due to corruption. Although Kuczynski was born in Peru, you might tell from his name that his parents were not, and in fact were from Germany, of Polish Jewish descent. Kuczynski even lived in the USA for a while before becoming a politician.
Digging Deeper
Some other national leaders of ethnicities other than the host country that did not fare well include:
Alberto Fujimori, another Peruvian President born in Peru, but this time of Japanese immigrants. After a decade as President, in 2000 Fujimori faced massive corruption charges and fled Peru for Japan. Arrested in Chile in 2005, Fujimori was sent to Peru for prison time, finally pardoned in 2017.
Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France from 2007 to 2012, was born in Paris of Hungarian and Greek/Jewish parents. In 2021, Sarkozy was convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison and home arrest.
Question for students (and subscribers): What national leader of foreign descent would you rate as the worst? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Badiou, Alain. The Meaning of Sarkozy. Verso, 2008.
Kuczynski, Pedro. Lost neighbor: Why Latin America Lags. Kindle, 2023.
The featured image in this article, the resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski by Presidencia de la República del Perú, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
