Premier ousted

last updated 8 January 2015

Lima

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo this week fired his prime minister, Beatriz Merino, after she accused rivals of spreading rumors that she was a lesbian. Merino, 56, told prominent journalists that the nation’s top Roman Catholic cardinal had alerted her to the rumor campaign. She said one rival tried to prove that she was “immoral” by showing around the deed to a house she owns and shares with another woman. Toledo said that Merino, the country’s first female prime minister, should have kept her “mouth shut,” instead of fanning the rumors by publicly proclaiming herself to be heterosexual. “We must be mature,” Toledo said, “and not turn politics into infantile acts.”