On February 17, the Peruvian Congress voted to remove interim President José Jeri from office. The move unleashed fresh political instability in the South American nation weeks before a presidential election
Jeri was the seventh Peruvian president in less than ten years. Only two of them were elected by popular vote. The others were vice presidents who stood in for deposed presidents and members of Congress who were chosen by their peers to lead the South American nation.
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Jeri will now be replaced by a member of Congress who is expected to lead the country during the April 12 election and until the president-elect is sworn in on July 28.
Jeri only joined the office four months ago. He is the third leader in a row to be removed from office by Congress in the Andean country.
Jeri became president in October 2025, following the sudden impeachment of his predecessor Dina Boluarte. Jeri was one of the youngest heads of state in the world, only to be suddenly deposed.
What is the Chifagate controversy?
Jeri’s tenure in office was quickly overshadowed by controversy, news agencies reported. Jeri faces a preliminary investigation for corruption and influence peddling by Peru’s attorney general’s office earlier this year.
The allegations relate to a series of undisclosed meetings with two Chinese businessmen in December. One of these businessmen has active government contracts, while the other is under investigation for alleged involvement in illegal logging, international news agencies reported.
The biggest row was over his alleged secret meetings with Chinese businessman Zhihua Yang, who owns shops and an energy concession and was already under state surveillance.
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Jeri was filmed wearing a hoodie while meeting Yang at a Chinese restaurant in a scandal that became dubbed “Chifagate”, after the local name for Chinese restaurants.
Jeri apologized after the meeting, claiming no wrongdoing. But the incident led to growing political pressure on Jerí before the upcoming presidential elections.
“His legitimacy as president has always been weak,” Martin Cassinelli, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin American Center, told Reuters. Martin called the overthrow an act of political interest on the part of the Congressional majority.”
In January 2025, Jeri was accused of sexually assaulting a woman who had attended a party the month before. The Attorney General dismissed the case in August, citing a lack of evidence. Jeri denied any wrongdoing.
As president, Jeri also faced controversy over awarding government contracts to women after night meetings at the presidential palace.
Who is Jose Jeri?
Born into a middle-class family in the Peruvian capital Lima, Jeri graduated from the Federico Villarreal National University in 2014. He also later earned a law degree from a private university in Lima.
Jeri joined the conservative party Somos Peru in 2013 while studying law and ran twice unsuccessfully for municipal office in Lima.
Jeri, a 39-year-old lawyer, was elected to Peru’s Congress in 2021 for Somos Peru, a small conservative party. Jeri initially lost his seat in Congress after his party won three seats in the legislature. But Martin Vizcarra, who was disqualified from public office before being sworn into Congress, eventually took the seat as his party’s candidate with the fourth largest number of votes. Vizcarra served as president of Peru between 2018 and 2020 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for hacking last year.
Jeri was the head of Peru’s Congress in October when lawmakers voted to remove then-President Dina Boluarte from office as the country faced rising rates of violent crime. Jeri was elected interim president of Peru, with the expectation that he will remain in office until July, when a new presidential term begins.
But his tenure was cut short as allegations of corruption surfaced against him, and Congress grew impatient with his leadership.
A deeper structural problem
Jeri’s recall underscores a deeper structural problem: a fractured political system where presidents struggle to build stable majorities in Congress — and lawmakers have the constitutional power to remove them.
It also highlights Peru’s continued political volatility ahead of April’s presidential race.
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“Unfortunately for Peruvians, the electoral system is likely to lead to fragmented elections that are unlikely to produce the majority needed for the next president to govern without fear of political impeachment,” Martin said in a Reuters report.
Peru has had presidents with shorter terms than Jeri. In 2020, interim president Manuel Merino resigned after less than a week in office following widespread anger and the deaths of two protesters.
What form of government does Peru have?
Peru, a nation of 32 million people, is a unitary presidential constitutional republic. The President of Peru, who is both head of state and prime minister, is directly elected by the people for a five-year term.
The country is governed by a written constitution (currently the 1993 constitution). However, unlike federal countries, Peru does not have states with autonomous constitutional powers. Regional and local governments exist, but authority ultimately flows from the central government in Lima.
What is an elimination clause?
Jeri was found not guilty of corruption. But his former colleagues in Congress cited the allegations as one of the reasons for his impeachment, saying he had become unfit to carry out his presidential duties.
A clause in Peru’s constitution allows lawmakers to remove presidents who are found to be “morally incapable” of carrying out their duties.
The clause gave lawmakers great leverage over Peru’s executive, which has also struggled to build a majority in Congress in recent years.
what’s next
Lawmakers will meet soon to elect a new interim president. The four candidates were nominated by coalitions within the Congress that span the entire ideological spectrum.
Unfortunately for Peruvians, the electoral system is likely to lead to fragmented elections.
Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a conservative businessman and former mayor of Lima, currently leads a crowded field of candidates that includes former lawmaker Keiko Fujimori, a three-time presidential candidate whose father was the country’s president in the 1990s.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote in the April 12 election, there will be a runoff between the top two candidates in June.