Peru’s Congress impeached President Boluarte

PERU - In Brief 10 Oct 2025 by Alfredo Thorne

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Last night with 121 votes of the 130 legislators (8 did not attended), Peru’s Congress impeached President Boluarte. This followed a sharp increase in insecurity and the feeling that her government had not been attending the population's demands for greater internal security. Official extortion complaints have increased to a daily average of 76 in June 2025 from 3 in June 2028. Two events triggered the impeachment: an urban transport strike on Tuesday that paralyzed the wholes city of Lima; and the shooting by extortionists of a highly popular band, Agua Marina, in an Army headquarters in Lima on Wednesday. While these events triggered the impeachment, the political crisis had been brewing for a long time, since she took over as president on December 7th, 2022. Her term started with the protests in the south of Peru where about 50 protesters died in clashes with the police and the army. But thereafter she became a frivolous president, delinked from the population at large. She has been investigated for acquiring expensive Rolex watches and other jewelry and secretly performing plastic surgery, among others. Having been born and raised in Chalhuanca, Apurímac, a poor city in the south of Peru, one would have expected her to maintain greater contact with the low-income population. However, she may have been the most unpopular president ever, and in the last poll she got only 2% of positive popular support Although the Constitution mandates that in the impeachment Congress’s session, the president has the right to defend herself, former President Boluarte decided not to attend, and Congress elected Speaker José Jerí, as the text president. Jerí becomes the 7th president i...