Chile Congress fires education minister amid probe
(Adds president's reaction)
SANTIAGO, April 16 (Reuters) - Chile's Congress fired the education minister over corruption accusations on Wednesday, the first time lawmakers have removed a Cabinet official since the South American country returned to democracy in 1990.
In a fresh blow to President Michelle Bachelet, the upper house of Congress voted to oust Yasna Provoste, who was suspended by the lower house this month and is now banned from holding public office for five years.
Bachelet, whose government has suffered other scandals over management of state funds, says the allegations against Provoste are politically motivated.
Provoste is accused of not preventing financial abuses on her watch and not punishing those behind irregularities in the allocation of school grants. She is also accused of ignoring auditors' recommendations and giving inexact or deliberately incomplete information to Congress.
"Today a new majority has won, and reason and justice have lost," Provoste told reporters after the vote, raising her arm in the chamber with a V-for-victory sign as loyalists rallied round to hug her and clap.
"I want to appeal to the ethical conscience of the citizens of our country, so they think about the injustice committed."
Provoste is the first government minister to be sacked by Congress since Chile returned to democracy after Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 iron-fisted dictatorship.
Bachelet has shuffled her Cabinet twice in two years to try to reverse a sharp fall in popularity, due partly to the scandals but mainly to a botched transportation system for the capital, Santiago, and the handling of student protests.
"Clearly this is a defeat. We have lost a good, excellent minister," Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma said.
Bachelet said she was "sad to see that in this case a bid to make a show of political strength has prevailed over all other considerations."
"The people will be the judge," the president said on her return from a state visit to China. "I will do whatever is necessary to ensure that this decision of the Senate will not turn into a bad precedent."
The government was hit by another setback earlier this month, when Chile's top constitutional court blocked its bid to promote the free distribution of the morning-after pill to teenagers in a victory for Bachelet's right-wing opponents. (Reporting by Manuel Farias; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by John O'Callaghan)
