On national day, Peruvian president gives a report to a half-empty Congress and street protests

Peruvian President Dina Boluarte gave her briefing on Sundayreport on the state of the country on Independence Day before a half-empty Congress and amid protests in the streets of the Relatives of the 50 dead and injured during the protests citizens of 2022 and 2023 who demanded the resignation of the president.

In one of the longest speeches ever heard from a Peruvian president, Boluarte spent five hours reading 79 pages while more than half of the seats of the 130 congressmen in Parliament were empty and Peruvian Foreign Minister Javier González-Olaechea fell asleep for a brief moment.

Boluarte announced the creation of the Ministry of Infrastructure, the twentieth portfolio, which will promote works throughout the country. He also indicated that the Ministry of the Interior will be renamed the Ministry of Security in order to better serve citizens. He also pointed out that a mining plan, suspended in 2019 after six protesters were killed, will be restarted and will generate 120,000 tons of copper annually.

At the end of her lengthy speech, the president left Parliament and walked with her cabinet along several blocks of a street — off-limits to the public and protected by hundreds of armed guards — that connects to the presidential palace.

Several blocks away, a hundred protesters, many of them relatives of the 50 people killed in protests in late 2022 and early 2023, tried to approach Parliament, but were stopped by police who repelled them with their shields and batons.

The day before, more than 4,000 protesters marched through the streets of Lima demanding justice for the deceased.

Boluarte has been in office for just over a year and a half and his popularity is barely 5%, according to a national survey from July by the Peruvian Institute of Studies.

The president, who has no parliamentary seat, has survived five calls for her impeachment during her short term thanks to a coalition with groups of populist and conservative legislators in a Parliament that is even more unpopular than she is. According to the same national survey from July by the Peruvian Institute of Studies, Congress has 4% approval, 2% undecided and 94% unpopularity.

The prosecutor’s office is investigating the president for the alleged crime of bribery, a type of corruption, because she allegedly received luxury watches and jewelry as a donation to a governor. She is also investigating her alleged responsibility in the deaths of Peruvians that occurred in the first months of her government.

Boluarte’s administration began on December 7, 2022, after Congress removed then-President Pedro Castillo, who had tried to close Parliament shortly before, but did not receive support from the security forces. Boluarte, who was vice president, succeeded him in office.

A series of protests began almost simultaneously, especially in the southern Andes, where Castillo had voted overwhelmingly for the elections. The protesters demanded the resignation of Boluarte, who had promised to resign if Castillo was removed by Congress. Castillo was eventually jailed and the courts ordered him to be held in preventive detention for three years while he is investigated for rebellion and corruption.

The protests, which ended in March 2023, left 50 civilians dead and 716 injured, according to the prosecutor’s office. Six soldiers and one policeman were also killed.

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