Peruvian Congress Impeaches President Dina Boluarte Amid Crime Crisis: NPR

LIMA, Peru — Peru’s Congress voted early Friday to impeach deeply unpopular President Dina Boluarte, as a crime wave grips the South American nation.

Lawmakers had held a debate and impeachment trial Thursday night in the 130-member unicameral Congress after voting in favor of four ballot requests to remove Boluarte from office over what they saw as his government’s failure to curb crime.

They demanded that Boluarte appear before them shortly before midnight to defend herself, but when she did not appear, they immediately voted for her ouster. In short order, 124 deputies voted shortly after midnight to impeach Boluarte. There were no votes against this effort.

The shocking turn of events came just hours after a shooting at a concert in the capital stoked anger over crime plaguing the country.

Unlike the eight previous attempts to impeach her, almost all legislative factions have expressed support for the latest demands.

Boluarte took office in December 2022 after Parliament used the same mechanism to impeach his predecessor.

The constitution provides for the president of Congress to be next in line for succession, but it was not immediately clear whether that would be the current congressional leader or whether lawmakers would choose another from among them.

Peru’s first female president has become its sixth leader in just under a decade. A normal presidential term is five years. His term was to end on July 28, 2026, and elections were scheduled for next April.

Boluarte took power in Peru in 2022 to finish the term of then-President Pedro Castillo, who was removed from office just two years into his five-year term after trying to dissolve the legislature to avoid his own impeachment. She had been Castillo’s vice president before becoming president.

There were more than 500 protests demanding his resignation in the first three months of his presidency.

Plagued by scandals, his government’s failure to respond to Peru’s relentless crimes proved to be its undoing.

On Wednesday, she partly blamed the situation on immigrants living in the country illegally.

“This crime has been brewing for decades and has been reinforced by illegal immigration, which previous administrations failed to defeat,” she said at a military ceremony. “Instead, they opened the doors to our borders and allowed criminals to enter everywhere… without any restrictions.”

Official figures show that 6,041 people were killed between January and mid-August, the highest number in the same period since 2017. Meanwhile, extortion complaints totaled 15,989 between January and July, an increase of 28% compared to the same period in 2024.

The country’s latest presidential crisis erupted after a man opened fire and injured five people Wednesday during a concert by Peru’s most popular cumbia band, Agua Marina.

Prime Minister Eduardo Arana defended Boluarte on Thursday during a hearing on crime before Parliament, but that was not enough to deter lawmakers from pursuing motions to remove the president from office.

“Parliament’s concerns are not resolved by processing an impeachment request, let alone approving it,” Arana told lawmakers. “We are not clinging to our positions. We are here and we knew all along that our first day here could also be our last day in office.”