Lawyer Dina Boluarte was sworn in before the plenary session of Congress this Wednesday as the first female president in the history of Peru, after the dismissal by Parliament of Pedro Castillo. Boluarte, who was Castillo’s vice president, said that she assumes office “according to the Political Constitution of Peru, from now until July 28, 2026,” when she must complete the current term of government. Boluarte is a 60-year-old lawyer with leftist ideas but not party militants, whose name was unknown to most Peruvians until a few months ago.
At his inauguration, Boluarte called for “a broad process of dialogue between all the national political forces” and requested a political truce in order to combat corruption. The ceremony, held in the legislative chamber, was attended by congressmen and other high authorities of the powers of the State and the Armed Forces.
Boluarte was born on May 31, 1962 in Chalhuanca, a city of less than 30,000 inhabitants at almost three thousand meters above sea level, and graduated as a lawyer from the private San Martín de Porres University in Lima, where he also followed postgraduate studies. She began her political career in 2007, in the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status, as a lawyer and head of offices.
In 2018, she was a candidate for mayor of Surquillo with the Peru Libertario party. Two years later, she participated in the extraordinary parliamentary elections of 2022, under the seal of Peru Libre (PL), the party of Pedro Castillo, but she did not get a seat. She barely reached 2.8% of the vote, but she established a good relationship with the party from which she was expelled last year, already as vice president, for publicly criticizing her boss, Vladimir Cerrón.
In 2021, Boluarte ran as a candidate for vice president on the list headed by Pedro Castillo. The formula won in the second round and she took office on July 28 of the same year. In addition, on July 29, 2021, she was sworn in as Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, a position she held until November 25, 2022, when she resigned after the appointment of Betssy Chávez as president of the Council of Ministers.
This Wednesday, after Castillo tried to close Congress, Boluarte distanced himself from his former ally by expressing on his Twitter account: “I reject Pedro Castillo’s decision to perpetrate the breakdown of the constitutional order by closing Congress. It is about a coup that aggravates the political and institutional crisis that Peruvian society will have to overcome with strict adherence to the law”.
