Manuel Merino took over the presidency of Peru in place of the sacked Vizcarra

The head of parliament became the third president since 2016. He confirmed the elections for April 11, 2021.

The head of the Peruvian Congress, Manuel Merino, took office on Tuesday 1 November, as the new president of the Andean country amid protests in the streets and fears in the markets, the day after the sacking of popular president Martín Vizcarra.

“I swear to God, to the country and to all Peruvians that I will faithfully exercise” the office of president, said Merino, a 59-year-old center-right agronomist and almost unknown to Peruvians. He thus becomes the third president since 2016, a reflection of the institutional fragility that has characterized the country since its independence in 1821.

As he swore, there were protests in the streets near the Congress building in Lima, with clashes between demonstrators and police, AFP reporters observed. The demonstrations were repeated in other cities, such as Arequipa and Cusco, according to local media.

“Our first commitment (…) is to respect the electoral process underway. Nobody can change the date of the elections called for April 11, 2021,” Merino said later, in his first speech to Congress, in which Ha also promised “impartiality in all electoral processes”.

He called for national “unity” and promised he would leave office on July 28, 2021, the day Vizcarra’s term ends.

In addition, he criticized the former president’s handling of the pandemic, stating that Peru is “the country with the worst management of covid-19”. The country accumulates 920,000 coronavirus infections and 35,000 deaths, and is the nation with the highest death rate in the world in relation to its population.

Merino, legislator of the northern region of Tumbes, on the border with Ecuador, was a lifelong member of Popular Action (center-right), the party founded by the two-time president Fernando Belaunde (1963-1968 and 1980-1985) ).

Markets have expressed fears that Peru will abandon its policy of maintaining macroeconomic balances with the new government.

Vizcarra, also center-right but without a party or a legislative college, left the government building to his private residence on Monday evening and ruled out opposing his dismissal for “moral incapacity” decided on Monday in Congress with judicial resources.