Peru's Congress Ousts President Jerí After Four Months in Office Over Secret Chinese Businessman Meetings

The marble corridors of Peru's Congress were still buzzing well past midnight on Tuesday when lawmakers delivered a verdict that has become grimly routine in Lima: another president, gone.

By a vote of 75 to 24, with three abstentions, Peru's unicameral legislature removed interim President José Jerí from office just four months after he assumed power . The 39-year-old conservative lawmaker — once one of the youngest heads of state in the world — becomes the third consecutive Peruvian president to be ousted by Congress, and the eighth to leave office since 2016 Peru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegationsaljazeera.com·SecondaryPeru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegations Peru’s Congress has ousted President Jose Jeri just four months into his term over multiple corruption allegations. The decision was made just weeks before a general election.. A vote to choose his replacement is expected on Wednesday.

The immediate trigger was a scandal that Peruvians have taken to calling Chifagate, after the local term for Chinese-Peruvian fusion restaurants. In January, local media published security-camera footage showing Jerí making multiple late-night visits to establishments owned by Zhihua Yang, a wealthy Chinese businessman who has lived in Peru for decades and holds a state energy concession . In one clip, Jerí appears wearing a hooded top in what critics called a clumsy attempt to conceal his identity. None of the meetings appeared on the official presidential agenda, as required under Peruvian law Peru’s Congress votes to remove President Jose Jeri in latest shake-upaljazeera.com·SecondaryJust four months into his term, Peru’s President Jose Jeri has been removed from office. The decision was the result of a Tuesday vote from Peru’s Congress, which debated multiple corruption allegations against Jeri’s government. Jeri, a right-wing leader, was formerly the head of Congress. But in October, he took over the country’s presidency after his predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was impeached for “moral incapacity”..

The revelations set off a cascade of scrutiny. Prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation into alleged influence-peddling connected to the Yang meetings Peru Votes to Impeach President José Jerínytimes.com·Secondary. More troubling still, investigators found that another Chinese citizen present at one of the encounters — Ji Wu Xiaodong — had been placed under house arrest while facing allegations of ties to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia Peru’s Congress votes to remove President Jose Jeri in latest shake-upaljazeera.com·SecondaryJust four months into his term, Peru’s President Jose Jeri has been removed from office. The decision was the result of a Tuesday vote from Peru’s Congress, which debated multiple corruption allegations against Jeri’s government. Jeri, a right-wing leader, was formerly the head of Congress. But in October, he took over the country’s presidency after his predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was impeached for “moral incapacity”.. The question of what, exactly, Jerí was discussing with individuals under active government scrutiny has yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

Chifagate was not Jerí's only problem. Separate reporting revealed that a number of young women had been awarded government positions after attending late-night meetings with the president inside the presidential palace, according to official entry-and-exit logs Peru’s Congress votes to remove President Jose Jeri in latest shake-upaljazeera.com·SecondaryJust four months into his term, Peru’s President Jose Jeri has been removed from office. The decision was the result of a Tuesday vote from Peru’s Congress, which debated multiple corruption allegations against Jeri’s government. Jeri, a right-wing leader, was formerly the head of Congress. But in October, he took over the country’s presidency after his predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was impeached for “moral incapacity”.. Several of these women also accompanied Jerí on multiple trips aboard the presidential aircraft. Jerí denied any impropriety and maintained that the appointments followed legal procedure, but the optics proved devastating to an already thin reservoir of public trust.

Jerí's approval ratings, which had started at respectable levels when he took office in October, cratered as the scandals accumulated. Political parties that had initially supported his caretaker government began calling for his resignation, each eager to distance themselves before April's presidential election . One lawmaker who backed the censure motion urged colleagues to end the agony and build a genuine transition rather than one marred by hidden interests and secret meetings Peru Votes to Impeach President José Jerínytimes.com·Secondary.

The speed of the removal raised its own questions about political motivation. Analysts at the Atlantic Council described Jerí's ouster as driven more by congressional self-interest than by any principled commitment to accountability, noting that his legitimacy had been fragile from the start Peru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegationsaljazeera.com·SecondaryPeru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegations Peru’s Congress has ousted President Jose Jeri just four months into his term over multiple corruption allegations. The decision was made just weeks before a general election.. He was, after all, an unelected successor to an unelected successor, governing a nation that has cycled through leaders at a pace that makes Italian politics look stable.

The broader context adds geopolitical texture. Jerí's fall comes amid an intensifying tug-of-war between Washington and Beijing over influence in Latin America. Just weeks before the impeachment vote, the Trump administration's newly appointed ambassador to Peru, Bernardo Navarro, publicly criticized Chinese lending practices in the region and warned that Peru risked compromising its sovereignty — a thinly veiled reference to the Chancay deepwater port, a $3.5 billion facility majority-owned by China's Cosco Shipping Ports located roughly 50 miles north of Lima Peru’s Congress votes to remove President Jose Jeri in latest shake-upaljazeera.com·SecondaryJust four months into his term, Peru’s President Jose Jeri has been removed from office. The decision was the result of a Tuesday vote from Peru’s Congress, which debated multiple corruption allegations against Jeri’s government. Jeri, a right-wing leader, was formerly the head of Congress. But in October, he took over the country’s presidency after his predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was impeached for “moral incapacity”.. US officials have previously suggested the port could serve dual naval purposes, a claim Peru has denied.

China's foreign ministry fired back, accusing the United States of spreading disinformation about Sino-Peruvian cooperation. Peru's own foreign ministry attempted to straddle the divide, posting a photograph of its minister meeting with China's ambassador to mark the Lunar New Year and praising bilateral trade relations Peru’s Congress votes to remove President Jose Jeri in latest shake-upaljazeera.com·SecondaryJust four months into his term, Peru’s President Jose Jeri has been removed from office. The decision was the result of a Tuesday vote from Peru’s Congress, which debated multiple corruption allegations against Jeri’s government. Jeri, a right-wing leader, was formerly the head of Congress. But in October, he took over the country’s presidency after his predecessor, Dina Boluarte, was impeached for “moral incapacity”.. The Chifagate scandal, with its images of a hooded president sneaking into a Chinese businessman's restaurant, has handed Washington's hawks a ready-made narrative about Chinese influence penetrating Latin American governments — regardless of whether the meetings involved anything more sinister than late-night dumplings.

For ordinary Peruvians, the latest palace drama is less about geopolitics and more about exhaustion. Less than a week after Jerí assumed power in October, protests erupted across the country as young Peruvians demanded that the political class do more to combat surging crime and endemic corruption. One protester was killed and more than 100 were injured Peru Votes to Impeach President José Jerínytimes.com·Secondary. The nation now faces the prospect of yet another interim leader — its eighth in a decade — presiding over an April election that analysts predict will produce a fragmented result and potentially another weak mandate.

Peru's political dysfunction carries real economic consequences. The country sits atop some of the world's largest copper and lithium reserves at a moment when global demand for both metals is surging. Foreign investors, watching the presidential revolving door spin ever faster, have reason to hesitate. The April election offers the theoretical possibility of a fresh start, but the crowded candidate field and weak party structures make a repeat of the instability cycle more likely than not.

Jerí, for his part, is not even Peru's shortest-serving president of the decade. That distinction belongs to Manuel Merino, who resigned in 2020 after less than a week following nationwide protests and the deaths of two demonstrators Peru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegationsaljazeera.com·SecondaryPeru impeaches President Jose Jeri over corruption allegations Peru’s Congress has ousted President Jose Jeri just four months into his term over multiple corruption allegations. The decision was made just weeks before a general election.. It is a measure of Peru's predicament that Jerí's four-month tenure qualifies as a comparatively extended run. The Congress that removed him will now attempt, once again, to find someone capable of keeping the seat warm until voters get their say in April — though recent history suggests the chair has a way of rejecting its occupants.