Peruvian President Dina Boluarte was impeached on Thursday night after a vote in Congress. International news agencies report this. Boluarte (63) is accused of “permanent moral incompetence” by the Peruvian parliament. She has long been criticized for the high crime rates and her approach to demonstrations in the country.
Peruvian media report that 121 of the 130 members of Congress voted in favor of the president’s impeachment just after midnight local time. Nine members were not present or abstained from voting. Boluarte herself was not present: according to her lawyer, she did not want to validate what she believes is a parliamentary process that “affects constitutional rights.”
Shortly after the vote, Boluarte’s successor was sworn in, 38-year-old José Jerí, who had been president of the Peruvian Congress for several months. Jerí is from the Christian democratic party Somos Peru (We Are Peru). As speaker of parliament, he was the right person to succeed Boluarte, because the office of vice president was unfilled. New elections will take place in Peru in 2026.
According to the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio the government crisis in Peru accelerated last week due to protests and strikes, the suppression of those protests by the government and the attack on a Peruvian band. On Thursday evening, four musicians from the band Agua Marina were shot in the capital Lima, possibly in connection with extortion. One of them is in bad shape.
Boluarte came to power at the end of 2022, during a previous major political crisis in the South American country. As a former vice president, she succeeded the then deposed Pedro Castillo and became the first female president. Given Peru’s turbulent recent political history, Boluarte managed to hold on to her post for a relatively long time. When she took office, she was the sixth president in six years. However, she was regularly criticized because of the high levels of crime in the country and her harsh actions against demonstrators.
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