On Tuesday, February 17, Peruvian President José Jerí was removed from office via a vote of the Congress of the Republic of Peru. His ousting is a continuation of a series of presidential removals in the country, which has faced many political scandals and allegations of corruption at the highest levels of government.
President Jerí was ousted amid a scandal where he surreptitiously met with two Chinese businessmen, one of whom held government contracts for energy production and the other of whom was allegedly involved in an illegal logging operation. After the meetings were captured on film, Jerí claimed to be planning a joint Peruvian-Chinese festival, but his protests were in vain. A motion was introduced to force him to vacate his office, and the Congress of the Republic voted 75-24 in favor of it.
Jerí was removed under a clause in Peru’s Constitution which allows its Congress to force a President to vacate their office on the grounds of “permanent moral incapacity” to perform their duties. In Jerí’s absence, the Congress will elect a new interim president from political factions within the legislature, as the present head of the Congress has (perhaps wisely) declined the presidential office.
Jerí himself actually assumed office via this clause, although by being head of Congress rather than elected by it. His predecessor, Dina Boularte, was ousted from office by the same mechanism in October of 2025. Peru’s Congress unanimously voted to force her to vacate under the “moral incapacity” clause after a shooting at a concert was pinned on her inability to prevent violent crime during her term. Similarly to Jerí, her administration was also plagued with complaints of corruption and extortion.
Likewise, Boultarte’s predecessor, Pedro Castillo, was removed after attempting a self-coup to retaliate against political opponents. During his administration, business leaders, politicians, and militant groups politically opposed to him coordinated transportation strikes and an attack on his Government Palace in order to destabilize his administration. The conflict sharply escalated over 2021 and 2022, with multiple attempts to impeach Castillo and Peru’s President of Congress attempting to have him declared illegitimate. Accusing the Congress of obstructing governmental function, Castillo tried to dissolve it and replace it with a “government of exceptional emergency” controlled by him. His self-coup failed, and he was arrested after being removed by Congress under the same “moral incapacity” clause.
The “moral incapacity” clause has been successfully used to remove Peru’s president seven times, and Jerí’s removal is the fourth time such a removal has occurred since 2020. One would think that this constant ousting of politicians for corrupt behavior would flush that corruption out of the country’s political system, but that has not been the case. The trouble lies in that Peru’s president and legislature are both elected for five-year terms, and the process for succeeding the president prioritizes established political leaders, so corrupt presidents are removed only to be replaced by corrupt legislators in the same corrupt political system.
Jerí will be replaced by Congressman José María Balcázar, who in 2019 was expelled from the Illustrious Bar Association of Lambayeque for misappropriating two million soles of the association’s funding. Hopefully, though, a president vacating two months before Peru’s April elections will motivate voters to be much more scrutinous of their elected officials, and foster much-needed political change within the country.
