LIMA, Peru (AP) – Peru’s interim president announced his resignation on Sunday as the nation plunged into its worst constitutional crisis in two decades after Congress ousted a popular leader.
In a short televised address, Manuel Merino said that despite allegations of opposition from Congress, he would take action within the law when he was sworn in as head of state on Tuesday. A parliamentary uprising ensued.
He said, “I, like everyone else, want what is best for our country.”
The decision came after a night of unrest in which dozens of protesters were injured by blunt force, tear gas or projectiles, with rights groups saying excessive force was used primarily by police to quell the protests.
A network of human rights groups reports that 112 people have been injured and 41 others are unaccounted for. The dead included 22-year-old Jack Pintado, who was shot 11 times, including in the head, and Jordan Sotolo, 24, who was attacked four times in the chest near his heart, health officials said.
“Two young men were killed by the police in a disrespectful, stupid and unjust manner,” Peruvian author and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa said in a recorded video shared on Twitter. “This repression – which is all against Peru – needs to stop.”
Meanwhile, a barrage of political leaders urged Merino to leave, while at least 13 of his 19 ministers were granted bail by his new government. The Congress president called for Merino’s immediate resignation and said he would vote to oust him if legislators rejected him.
“We are considering resigning,” said Luis Valdez, the current president of Congress.
Marino, a well-known politician and rice farmer, became Peru’s leader on Tuesday after a stunning vote to oust popular former Congress president Martin Vizcara. As head of Congress, Merino was next to the president when Vizcarra was ousted. But opponents claim the move was tantamount to an illegal parliamentary uprising and refused to recognize it.
“We want the voice of the people to be heard,” said Fernando Ramirez, a protester on Saturday night.
Congress kicked out Wizkara in the 19th century using a dating clause that allows a powerful legislator to remove the president for “permanent moral incompetence.” Legislators accused Vizcara of poor handling of the epidemic and of taking bribes of more than $ 630,000 in exchange for two construction contracts when he was governor of a small southern province years ago.
Prosecutors are investigating the allegations but Vizkara has not been charged. On Friday, a judge banned him from leaving the country for 18 months.
The former president on Sunday denied the violence on Twitter, blaming what he called “illegal and illegitimate government” for the bloodshed.
“This country will not blame the deaths of these brave young men,” Vizcara wrote.
Contrary to what has been seen in recent years in Peru, most young people remain indifferent to the country’s notoriously tumultuous politics. Opposition groups called for a cease-fire in protest of Merino’s decision to step down.
His prime minister, Terrantro Flores-Rose, was a former defense secretary who resigned in 2009 after 34 people were killed in police clashes with indigenous protesters on the Amazon.
Alberto Vargara, a political analyst at the University of the Pacific in Peru, described the new cabinet as “old, bitter, stale, closed to the world.”
In criticism before Saturday’s uprising, Merino protested against the move, telling a local radio station that young people were protesting against unemployment and could not complete their studies due to the epidemic.
Peru has the highest per capita COVID-19 mortality rate in the world and has seen the worst economic contraction in Latin America.
Between Monday and Thursday there were 35 attacks against members of the media, by almost all police officers, according to the National Association of Journalists. Rights groups have also documented excessive force against protesters, deploying tear gas near homes and hospitals and detaining demonstrations.
“We are documenting cases of police brutality in downtown Lima,” Jose Miguel Vivanko, director of Human Rights Watch America, wrote on Twitter on Saturday. “Everything indicates that repression against peaceful protesters is intensifying.”
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Armaario was reported from Bogota, Colombia.
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