Millions of Peruvians woke up this Friday morning, turned on the radio, and discovered that they had been left without a president. Dina Boularte fell after midnight on Thursday due to a motion of censure promoted by the same deputies who had allowed her to govern for the last three years. The motion declared his “moral incapacity” to lead the country and once again Congress—the institution least valued among Peruvians—toppled a leader. Her departure saddens almost no one—her popularity has fallen to 2%, making her the worst-rated president in recent history—but it plunges Peru into the chaos of a new political crisis. Uncertainty is the only certainty in an ungovernable country that has seen seven presidents rise and fall in the last nine years. His successor, José Jerí, a young politician who became president of Congress by chance and who was accused of rape, promises to tackle the serious security crisis plaguing the country. But his figure generates more doubts than certainties.
The question that everyone was asking until this Friday afternoon was where is Boularte? The former president addressed the nation after her dismissal with a message where she once again demonstrated her disconnection with the citizens. there was not mea culpasbut a long speech in which he listed the “achievements” of his Government. Even public television interrupted its broadcast. And then the night swallowed her up. Faced with rumors that the lawyer would request asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, a large group of young protesters stood guard at the diplomatic headquarters, but they found no trace of her.
Twelve hours had passed since the impeachment and more than a dozen journalists and television cameras took turns standing guard in front of the former president’s house, in a middle-class district about 20 minutes by car from the center of Lima. Between direct and direct, the reporters said that they had seen two official cars enter and leave during the night, but that the tinted windows prevented them from seeing who was inside. The three-story house, protected by a wall from which a shaggy bougainvillea hangs, seems deserted. Nobody answers the phone, but Boularte’s lawyer assures that his client is there. “Neither asylum nor alien. She is at home. That was and will be her whereabouts: her country,” the lawyer wrote in
But the endless guards had their reward and Boluarte ended up opening the wooden gate of his house, in what was his first public appearance after his dismissal. “It is not even in the slightest thought, nor (in) my patriotic feeling, to leave the country, so much so that having lived approximately seven years abroad, I have returned to the homeland because the best to serve Peru was always in my heart,” the former president stressed. The former president told reporters that on the night of her motion she arrived home around three in the morning and that she was resting “as appropriate.”
Boluarte has more than one case pending with justice and would have reasons to want to leave. Until this Thursday she was judicially protected as president, but today, without the presidential sash, she is surrounded. While waiting for news of his whereabouts, the Public Ministry presented two precautionary measures to prevent his departure from the country. One for having favored the surgeon who secretly operated on his face and the other for having raised money to pay civil compensation for a political ally who was a fugitive from justice. “I am clear with my conscience,” he said at the door of his house. “Those cases that are under investigation at the Public Ministry, I am not responsible for any of them.”
Expressly invested, the former president of Congress, José Jerí, is the new president. He will govern, in principle, for only nine months, when the candidate who is elected in the presidential elections in April is scheduled to take office. Jerí, 38 years old, has no political weight—in the last elections he did not get even 12,000 votes—but doubts hover, above all, about his integrity. Reported for rape (a case that was filed) and for acts of corruption, he is a faithful follower of dozens of pornographic pages on Instagram, as revealed in recent hours by those who have monitored his social networks.
After Boularte – who repressed the protests against him with an iron fist that resulted in 60 deaths – Jerí should be an injection of confidence. But his word is also in question. In August, in an interview for the newspaper The Commercethey asked him about his role in a hypothetical dismissal of the president and he assured: “If that scenario arose, I would desist.” Jerí changed his mind, as did Boularte, who never called the promised elections after occupying the seat left empty by Pedro Castillo, today in prison for the self-coup he carried out to prevent his dismissal. Several analysts, in any case, see Jerí as a puppet president who will be managed behind the scenes by Patricia Li, a politician questioned for being complicit in tax fraud.
During his presentation in Parliament, José Jerí, the new tenant of Casa Pizarro, promised to meet the demands of Generation Z, which has been rioting in the streets for a month. “They are demanding changes and we must build minimum agreements,” he said. Faced with a citizenry fed up with its ruling class, young Peruvians demand real changes. Piero Meza, a 17-year-old university student, approached the ousted president’s house after leaving class. Before the complicit gaze of three friends, she assures that Jerí does not represent them. “We are already very used to political crises, to not having leaders, but we are tired. Now they take out Dina and what happens? Nothing,” he laments. “We need everything to change, we need to put an end to the corrupt police officers, to those criminals dressed in uniform. Nothing makes sense if we don’t have someone to protect us,” he adds.
The 124 deputies present in the chamber who supported, without exception, the motion of censure, justified their decision by the president’s inability to respond to the serious crisis of insecurity that has scared Peruvians. Crime has skyrocketed and hitmen and gangs dedicated to extortion are rampant, causing hundreds of deaths. With more than 1,700 homicides so far this year, on Wednesday the final blow occurred that brought down the sword of Damocles on Boularte. Two individuals on a motorcycle attacked an emblematic cumbia orchestra that was performing at a military facility. The attack cut the thin thread that supported the Boluarte Government. Six months before the general elections, political groups turned their backs so as not to be splashed by horror. His allies let go of his hand to try for re-election. The old political calculation that always keeps Peru in suspense.
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