Peru ousts president amid crime surge

By Mitra Taj and Genevieve Glatsky

LIMA – President Dina Boluarte of Peru was swiftly impeached and removed from office by Congress just after midnight Friday (10), after a brazen shooting at a cumbia concert and mounting frustration over her failure to curb rampant crime prompted the parties that had long sustained her to withdraw their support.

Lawmakers voted 118-0 to remove Boluarte – the most unpopular Peruvian president in recent decades – invoking a constitutional clause that permits Congress to declare the presidency vacant on grounds of “permanent moral incapacity”.

Both lawmakers and demonstrators outside the building erupted in cheers.

The president of Congress, José Jerí, is next in line to serve as interim president until the general election scheduled for April 12, unless lawmakers elect a new leader from among themselves.

Boluarte’s ouster represented a sharp reversal by the right-wing and centrist parties that had effectively governed in coalition with her for the past three years, even as her approval rating plunged as low as 2% to 4%, from about 21% when her term started.

On Friday Congress approved four motions to impeach her with the support of parties across the ideological spectrum.

Her downfall comes amid widespread outrage over rising crime.

Peru is grappling with a surge in gang-controlled extortion and contract killings, with extortion cases skyrocketing from a few hundred in all of 2017 to more than 2,000 per month this year, according to national police data. Dozens of bus drivers targeted by extortion rings have been killed on the job in the past two years, and several concerts, stores and other small businesses have been attacked with explosives.

As lawmakers prepared to debate Boluarte’s impeachment, TV crews and small crowds of protesters gathered outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in Lima, where she was rumoured to be considering asylum once she lost presidential immunity.

One protester held a sign reading “We’re governed by shame” toward television cameras.

Earlier this week, Boluarte advised Peruvians not to respond to calls or messages from extortionists. “Don’t open those calls, those messages,” she said. “Tell the police.”

Her measures, including repeated states of emergency, have largely failed to curb violence, and experts say several laws she backed to protect political allies have undermined the prosecution of organized crime.

In the latest example, on Wednesday (8) night, men on motorcycles opened fire with a machine gun on a popular cumbia band performing in Lima, leaving four members wounded, according to local media.

Boluarte became president after her predecessor, Pedro Castillo, the Marxist party leader for whom she was serving as vice president, was impeached and arrested in 2022 for attempting to seize control of Congress and the judiciary.

Her decision to replace him rather than resign – as she had once promised, to allow new elections – prompted violent protests that left 49 civilians dead during police and military crackdowns. She is now under investigation by national human rights prosecutors.

To stay in power, Boluarte had relied on a coalition of right-wing and centrist parties, surviving seven impeachment attempts by leftist lawmakers. Parties led by top presidential contenders Keiko Fujimori and Rafael López Aliaga – central to her ouster Friday – had previously opposed removing her.

With elections just six months away, politicians have sought to distance themselves from Boluarte.

This week conservative presidential candidate Phillip Butters was attacked by a mob at a radio station in the southern region of Puno while defending his past support for the crackdown on protesters following Boluarte’s ascent to power. Police escorted him out wearing a helmet as protesters hurled rocks and debris.

The episode underscored the volatile political climate, and some observers said it might have spurred some right-wing lawmakers to abandon the deeply unpopular president.

But “it’s only because electoral incentives have increased,” said Gonzalo Banda, a Peruvian political scientist with University College London. After the recent unrest, he said, “I think the entire political establishment understood that there was no more time.”

Boluarte has faced accusations that she accepted Rolex watches as bribes, abandoned her post for cosmetic surgery and helped the fugitive head of her former Marxist party evade arrest — which she denies.

The controversy over the watches reverberated in a country with a faltering economy and rising hunger, undermining the progress of Peru, once lauded for consolidating its democracy and lifting millions out of poverty during a mining-fuelled commodities boom.

“I think few presidents have faced political crises with such frivolity as Boluarte,” said Banda.

“She thought that after the initial protests, she had free rein, with a Congress uninterested in exercising political oversight,” he added. “But everything is very precarious in Peru.”

Her impeachment also comes amid long-standing political turmoil, where six former presidents have spent time in prison over the past two decades, with three convicted of corruption.

Since 2016, corruption scandals have engulfed Peru. Two presidents, Castillo and Martín Vizcarra, were impeached; another president, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, resigned to avoid removal; and nearly all living former presidents have faced investigations for corruption or human rights abuses. Alan García, who served in the 1980s and 2000s, died by suicide in 2019 as authorities arrived to detain him.

In April, the former first lady Nadine Heredia, sought asylum at the Brazilian Embassy in Lima after she and her husband, former President Ollanta Humala, were sentenced to 15 years for laundering nearly $3 million – mostly from the Brazilian firm Odebrecht – to fund Humala’s 2006 and 2011 campaigns.

Other former presidents were also implicated in Odebrecht-related probes: Alejandro Toledo was sentenced last year to 20 years for accepting $35 million in bribes, while Kuczynski spent years under house arrest over charges he denies.

Some faced graver charges. Alberto Fujimori, who ruled with authoritarian tactics in the 1990s, served more than a decade in prison for human rights abuses and corruption before his controversial pardon in 2023. He died last year at 86.

More recently, Castillo, Peru’s first left-wing president in a generation, has faced charges of rebellion and abuse of authority for attempting to dissolve Congress in 2022. Later that year, Mexico granted asylum to his family, prompting the Peruvian government to expel the Mexican ambassador.

Boluarte is deeply unpopular, but Congress is also widely mistrusted. Any moves by legislators to consolidate power could risk fuelling further unrest if they are seen as exploiting the crisis for political gain.

One of the demonstrators outside the congressional building held a sign that read, “Criminals sacrifice criminals to look like heroes.”

-New York Times