Peru president Pedro Castillo replaced after impeachment

Dina Boluarte has become Peru’s first female president after her predecessor was arrested and removed from office.

Pedro Castillo was detained on charges of “rebellion” after he announced he would install a “government of exception” just hours before he was due to face an impeachment vote, reported CNN.

Shortly before noon on Wednesday, Castillo abruptly announced the dissolution of Congress and the installation of an emergency government, “stunning political leaders across the spectrum”, said The New York Times, by “effectively trying to carry out what was widely condemned as an attempted coup to cling to power”.

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However, Peruvian armed forces rejected Castillo’s attempt to sideline lawmakers, describing it as an “infringement of the constitution”. Castillo, a “bumbling occupant” of the presidency job, said The Economist, was removed from power.

After she was sworn in as Peru’s sixth president in less than five years, Boluarte was applauded and cheered by politicians. “It is up to us to talk, to engage in dialogue, to reach agreements,” the former vice-president said. “I ask for time to rescue our country from corruption and incompetence within the government.”

It remains to be seen how long she survives. A “former lawyer and a member of a Marxist political party until she was pushed out last year for criticising the party leader”, Boluarte, 60, is “not particularly well-known”, said The New York Times. In a recent poll, Peruvians “favoured a new general election” over her replacing Castillo.

Whether she “has the stomach and the political nous” to undertake major political reform is also unclear, wrote Michael Stott for the Financial Times. “In the meantime,” he added, “an authoritarian outsider might try to seize power, though this seems unlikely given the army’s clearly expressed preference for constitutional solutions.”