The Congress of Peru dismisses President José Jerí after only four months in office for failing to fulfill his duties

José Jerí was a congressman by accident, and he was president by accident. Today he leaves the head of state as a result of another accident, in the form of a motion of censure. Unlike the more common impeachment due to “permanent moral incapacity”, which requires a qualified majority of 87 votes in a Congress of 130 seats, censure only requires a simple majority of 66 yeses or less, as long as there are fewer deputies present. This is how the dismissal of the leader of the conservative Somos Perú prospered this Tuesday.

The former president of Congress became the fourth president to be removed by the Legislature in the last ten years. Before him, his predecessors Martín Vizcarra, Pedro Castillo and Dina Boluarte fell victims in the Chamber. Jerí would also be the third consecutive president sacrificed in the cursed institution for the presidents of Peru.

The leader of Somos Perú had only been in office for four months, where he arrived in October of last year, after the dismissal of the unpopular Boluarte, unable to resolve the pressing security crisis.

The short period of time at the head of the State has not prevented him from leaving a disastrous balance. When he succeeded former president Dina Boluarte, famous both inside and outside the country for having the lowest approval rating of any international leader, he transcended his dark past. Inappropriate messages to minors, hiring prostitution services and accusations of corruption.

In the Presidency his behavior does not seem to have been much better. He was accused of having secret meetings with Zhihua Yang, a Chinese businessman whose company had received contracts with the State.

Many thought that Jerí, as analyst Daniel Zovatto stressed, would try to maneuver so that his eventual departure would not occur through censure, but through a presidential vacancy, a mechanism that raises the threshold of necessary votes from 66 to 87. “The difference is not minor: it is the border between an almost certain and immediate fall and an unlikely survival,” Zovatto anticipated.

They thought well. Legislator Ana Zegarra Saboya, from the Somos Perú party, took the floor this Tuesday in Congress to propose a vacancy instead of censure in order to avoid incurring a constitutional violation. His arguments did not convince anyone, and the parliamentary debate continued as planned.

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