Valentín Toribio Demetrio Agustin Paniagua Corazao (23 September 1936 – 16 October 2006) was a Peruvian lawyer and politician who briefly served as President of Peru from 2000 to 2001. Elected President of Congress on 16 November 2000, he ascended to the presidency as incumbent Alberto Fujimori and both his Vice Presidents resigned by 22 November 2000. Due to Fujimori shortening his presidential term in order to expire on 28 July 2001, Paniagua's main task was to oversee the new elections. Paniagua was a longtime member of Popular Action, serving as Secretary General and Party President. Early life and education Paniagua's father was born in Bolivia but lived most of his life in Peru. Valentín Paniagua was born in Cusco and attended high school at Salesian School of Cusco. He went on to study law at the Universidad Nacional San Antonio Abad in Cusco, and subsequently transferred to the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, where he completed his law degree. In the following years, he worked in his private practice as a lawyer and started a political career. In addition, he completed a master's degree in political science at the University of Indiana. 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 landowners' rights, to the communists and to the APRA. Paniagua became a member of the Christian Democrat Party (PDC), which was best aligned to his Roman Catholic and reformist ideals. Political career In June 1963 he was elected to Congress as a representative for Cusco in the joint list of Acción Popular (AP) and PDC, an alliance that catapulted the leader of AP, Fernando Belaúnde, to the presidency of the country. Despite Paniagua's youth, Belaúnde appointed him Minister of Justice and Cult in his first government. In 1966, a section of the PDC led by the then-mayor of Lima, Luis Bedoya Reyes, cut ties with the leadership of Héctor 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 3 October 1968, sent 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 27 July 1974, in protest of its acceptance of the military