#peru-politics

#peru-politics

Jose Maria Balcazar is the new president of Peru. Congress determined this on Wednesday night in an extraordinary session following the censure of Jose Jeri over his suspicious ties to Chinese businessmen and a group of women who were allegedly favored with government contracts. Peru now has a new head of state who was not chosen by popular vote, but by a parliamentary one.

Peru's interim president, Jose Jeri, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen. Jeri, 39, who took office in October after his predecessor Dina Boluarte was forced out, told a congressional oversight committee on Wednesday that he had been the target of a smear campaign designed to destabilise the country ahead of elections in April.

Peru's supreme court on Thursday sentenced the former leftwing president Pedro Castillo to 11 years, five months and 15 days in prison for trying to disband Congress and rule by decree in December 2022. Labelled Peru's first poor president, the former rural schoolteacher, who had never held elected office before winning the presidency, was impeached by Congress and jailed on the same day after his attempted power grab.