Will he… Won’t he? Can he… Can’t he? The long saga of whether García will be able to stand for president (yet again) in 2016 passed another chapter at the end of March when Judge Hugo Velásquez nullified a congressional report into alleged corruption during García’s second government (2006-11). The report had recommended that Congress debate a constitutional accusation against García which, if approved, would have prevented him standing in the 2016 presidential elections.

The so-called ‘megacomisión’ came into being shortly after the inauguration of Ollanta Humala as president in 2011. Perhaps its most important area of investigation was into whether García had used his presidential prerogatives improperly to pardon hundreds of convicted drug traffickers. The report also looked into seven other alleged instances of supposed wrong-doing, including that of unauthorised telephone bugging in the so-called Business Track scandal, the illegal sale of state-owned land and irregularities in the García government’s water provision programme.

Judge Velasquez’s ruling was not his first on the megacomisión report. In September, he had ruled that the results of the investigation up to that point be annulled because the commission had not made clear to García if the evidence he had been required to give had not followed due process. The ruling had been seen as a major victory for García’s lawyers, lifting the threat of him being barred from standing for public office.

García has argued that the campaign to bar him from standing had been orchestrated from Government Palace by President Ollanta Humala. The head of the multi-party commission, Congressman Sergio Tejada, belongs to the ruling Gana Perú coalition of which Humala’s Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) is the driving force. For Tejada, the judge’s decision represented “a new episode of impunity” and, responding to the judicial verdict, commented with reference to García that “democracy is severely undermined when there are untouchables”.

The judge’s ruling may not be the end of the matter. The case may yet be appealed to a higher court. As well as the pretension that the ruling involved “impunity”, it also represents a clash of constitutional powers between the judiciary and the powers of oversight exercised by the legislature. The problem lies in the fact that an eventual resolution of the case may take a long time to decide. It may thus end up being kicked into the ‘long grass’.

This is not the first time. Alan García still faces accusations of corruption and human rights violations relating to his first government (1985-2000). A parliamentary enquiry into ‘illicit enrichment’ was finally swept aside following Alberto Fujimori’s autogolpe in April 1992. García found himself abruptly removed from the scene when he was obliged to seek refuge abroad in the days that followed. Human rights organisations, however, including the National Human Rights Coordinator, the Coordinadora, are still seeking to clarify his role on matters relating to Accomarca, a slaughter of innocent peasants by the security forces in Ayacucho in 1985.

García has sought to defend himself by going on the attack and incessantly criticising Humala through his Twitter account and alleging that Humala will stop at nothing to ensure that his wife, Nadine Heredia, stands as candidate to replace him in 2016. Garcia has coined the phrase “re-elección conyugal” to describe what he sees as the government trying to perpetuate itself in power. There is a law which prevents members of the president’s family from standing in such circumstances, but a law that could feasibly be repealed.

His tactics of constantly harrying the president are reminiscent of those he used against President Alejandro Toledo (2001-06) whom he succeeded. With Toledo’s popularity in single digits, García risked bringing the recently democratised country close to a political crisis in order to win the 2006 elections. His choice of tactics to realise his over-sized political ambitions appear to know no limits.