The Congress of the Republic opens this Wednesday the process to designate the successor of José Jerí, who was interim head of State in his capacity as head of Parliament, after the dismissal of Dina Boluarte last October.When he was censured as president of Congress, he automatically lost his status as acting president.
In accordance with parliamentary regulations, the Senior Official’s Office receives the lists of candidates seeking to replace Jerí, a step that marks the beginning of the dispute for the leadership of one of the powers of the State.
So far, four names appear as possible candidates: Héctor Acuña, from Honor and Democracy;María del Carmen Alva, from Acción Popular;Édgar Raymundo, from the Popular Democratic Bloc;and José María Balcázar, from PerúLibre.Meanwhile, Silvia Monteza, also from Acción Popular, submitted her list outside the established deadline.
The lists must be presented officially and then the registered candidates are publicly read.During this act, two congressmen are appointed as tellers, in charge of supervising the development of the election.
The vote is deposited in an amphora and follows the alphabetical order of the parliamentarians present.Each legislator casts his vote individually, which guarantees reservation and organization.At the end, the tellers and the Parliament authorities carry out the counting one by one.The list that reaches a figure equal to or greater than the simple majority of the concurrent congressmen will be the winner.
If no candidate achieves this support, the regulations contemplate a second round between the two most voted.The president-elect takes the oath before the plenary session of Congress immediately after the vote and takes office without delay.
Jerí ascended to the head of state on October 10 in his capacity as president of Congress, at the time when his predecessor, Dina Boluarte (2022-2025), was dismissed, who in turn replaced the imprisoned former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022), of whom she was vice president.
He had entered Congress in 2021 to replace the disqualified former president Martín Vizcarra (2018-2022) with just 11,600 votes.In a few months, he went from being a rank and file and unknown legislator to chairing parliamentary committees, then the Parliament, and from there to the presidential chair.
His arrival to power was marked from the beginning by a complaint of rape that allegedly occurred at the end of 2024, which was archived by the nation’s prosecutor, Tomás Gálvez, due to lack of biological evidence, despite the fact that another defendant in the same case had declared that Jerí could have allegedly used objects or other means to carry out the rape.
As a result of this case, a judge ordered him to undergo therapy to treat a psychosexual pathology, and during his first days his old tweets went viral, in which he showed a predilection for “sex” and “women,” while on his Instagram account he followed hundreds of profiles of women who created erotic content.
