Peruvian President of Congress Manuel Merino on Tuesday assumed office as Peru’s third president in four years, amid street protests and market jitters after the impeachment of former president Martin Vizcarra over corruption allegations.
Police clashed with demonstrators in the streets outside the Peruvian Congress building in Lima, as the Merino was sworn in.
Police and local media reported about 30 arrests and an unspecified number of injuries, with the authorities firing tear gas.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The IDL Reporteros news site reported that a number of people were injured by pellets fired by police.
Clashes also occurred in the cities of Arequipa and Cusco.
Late on Monday, Vizcarra was dismissed in an impeachment vote and on Tuesday, he questioned the “legality and legitimacy” of his removal.
“Legality is in question because the Constitutional Court has not yet ruled and legitimacy is given by the people,” he told reporters outside his home in the capital.
Earlier, he said that he was leaving with his head “held high,” despite bribe-taking allegations that date from when he was governor of his native southern Moquegua region.
He denied any wrongdoing.
Merino, 59, takes power through July next year, the remainder of Vizcarra’s original term, and immediately pledged to respect the electoral timetable.
Peru is set to hold general and presidential elections in April next year.
Vizcarra survived a previous impeachment vote in September, charged with “moral incapacity.”
After months of internal jousting between Vizcarra and his opponents in Congress, Merino used his first speech as president to call for national unity.
Constitutionally, succession fell to Merino because Peru has not replaced former Peruvian vice president Mercedes Araoz, who resigned a year ago in the wake of a separate political crisis.
Party leaders on Tuesday seemed divided over the wisdom of removing Vizcarra in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and a crippling recession, with the financial markets nervous about whether the new government would maintain existing economic policies.
Some parties that ganged up against Vizcarra have proposed amendments to mining legislation, “suggesting a worsening of the business environment” in Peru, London-based IHS Markit said in a note.
Bank of America’s research division said that Merino “has favored populist decisions, raising future concerns about proposals not friendly to a market economy.”
Former Lima mayor George Forsythe, a likely presidential candidate, called Vizcarra’s dismissal “a coup d’etat in disguise.”
Former leftist presidential candidate Veronika Mendoza said: “What happened in Congress is shameful and outrageous,” while Lima’s Catholic archbishop, Carlos Castilo, said that the Congress lacked “a sense of proportion” in dismissing the president.
A lawmaker for the northern region of Tumbes on the border with Ecuador, Merino is a member of the center-right Accion Popular party founded by two-term former Peruvian president Fernando Belaunde, who was last in power in 1985.
Vizcarra ruled out taking legal action to try to overturn the impeachment.
“I leave the government palace as I entered two years, eight months ago: with my head held high,” he said, surrounded by his ministers on the patio of the government building. “I’m leaving with a clear conscience and with my duty fulfilled.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion