José María Balcázar.-Peru’s New Leftist President!
Lima, Feb 18 (EFE).-
Leftist legislator José María Balcázar was elected Peru’s new president, and the country’s oldest in history, by Congress on Wednesday.
The 83-year-old replaces right-wing congressman José Jerí, whom the Peruvian legislature impeached on Tuesday after just four months in office, less than two months out from the general elections.
Balcázar received the most votes to fill the vacancy left by Jerí as president of Congress, which automatically makes him interim president of Peru in the absence of elected officials following the removals of Pedro Castillo and Dina Boluarte.
The congressman from the Marxist party Perú Libre, with which Castillo won the 2021 election, became the oldest president in the country’s history and the eighth leader in nearly a decade of political crisis.
His mission will be to serve as interim head of state until July 28, when he must hand over the presidential office to the winner of the April general elections.
“I want to guarantee the people of Peru a peaceful and transparent democratic and electoral transition,” Balcázar said in his first speech.
The new president demanded that there be “no doubt whatsoever about the general elections” and announced that in the coming months he will seek “to maintain true peace” and ensure the country has “ministries capable of confronting citizen insecurity,” which is the main demand of Peruvians.
He also asserted that “it is indeed possible to build a new democracy.”
“We must rewrite the history of Peru,” he emphasized before pointing out that “there is a debt that Peru needs to repay” to the indigenous Quechua and Aymara populations.
Surprise win
The leftist, a lawyer by profession, pulled off the surprise win against four candidates including the favorite, former speaker of Congress María del Carmen Alva, of the right-wing Acción Popular party. He defeated her thanks to the support of the left and several right-wing party groups that opposed Alva’s candidacy.
In the first round, Balcázar obtained 46 votes compared to Alva’s 43, the right-wing candidate Héctor Acuña’s 13, and the leftist candidate Édgar Reymundo’s seven.
The surprise was even greater when, in the second round, the leftist candidate obtained 64 votes against Alva’s 46, thus securing the vacant presidential seat.
In the days leading up to the runoff, Balcázar even suggested he would be willing to pardon former president Castillo, who is serving a 15-year prison sentence for the failed 2022 coup attempt to avoid impeachment by Congress.
Like his predecessor, Peru’s new president has faced a series of controversies and accusations. Although he served on Peru’s Supreme Court, he was removed from the bench for altering a final ruling, among other irregularities.
He also sparked considerable controversy by defending child marriage and opposing a bill that sought to prohibit such unions.
Jerí did not participate in the session. Despite being censured on Tuesday, he retains his status as a congressman for the Somos Perú party and could have participated, but he declined.
The former president was censured due to questions arising from a series of semi-clandestine meetings with Chinese businesspeople who have government contracts, as well as alleged irregularities in the hiring of a group of female officials whom he had previously received at the Government Palace. EFE
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