Dina Boluarte was sworn in before Parliament on Wednesday as the first president of Peru in 200 years of republic and called a truce between all political groups to get the South American country out of a long crisis and “root out” the cancer of corruption.
The 60-year-old lawyer replaced Pedro Castillo, who was dismissed “for permanent moral incapacity” after trying to close Parliament in an act that was described by other public institutions as a “coup d’état” and that was criticized by the United States.
Boluarte was Castillo’s vice president since he took office in July 2021 and had held the position of Minister of Development and Social Inclusion until almost two weeks ago.
It lacks a bench that supports it in Parliament. In January she was expelled from the Marxist Peru Libre party with which Pedro Castillo came to power. She claimed that she was removed from her because she did not share the thoughts of the general secretary, the neurosurgeon Vladimir Cerrón.
The new president is fluent in Quechua and Spanish, and like Castillo, she also has no experience in political office. She has worked as an official of the national identification registry from 2007 to 2021.
In his first speech with the presidential band, he said that he was born in Challhuanca, a city in the Andes in the southeast of the Apurímac region. “I am from the deep country, I was born and raised in a small town in Peru, I am the last daughter of a large family, a family that lived in precariousness and grew up with the appreciation of my parents,” she said.
Consequently, he affirmed that his government was committed “to fight so that the nobody, the excluded, the outsiders, have the opportunity and access that they have historically been denied.”
After being sworn in by Parliament, Boluarte, dressed in a cream-colored tailored suit, arrived at the presidential palace and spoke briefly in public with her security guards and asked to maintain a climate of trust.
The new Peruvian president must complete Castillo’s term of office until July 28, 2026.
“I have seen with revulsion how the press and judicial bodies have reported shameful acts of robbery against the money of all Peruvians,” he said in his inauguration speech in Parliament before the legislators who had been dismissed shortly before. to Castle.
The first woman president of Peru indicated that Castillo had attempted “a coup d’état” that “did not find an echo in the institutions of democracy and in the street.” Earlier, she had rejected Castillo’s attempt to dissolve Congress and added that this decision aggravated “the political and institutional crisis that Peruvian society will have to overcome with strict adherence to the law.”
