Peru’s Congress heads to runoff vote to pick José Jerí’s successor

The incoming president will serve a five-month interim term and must hand over power on July 28 to the winner of the April 12 general election

Peru’s Congress moved to a second-round vote to elect a new head of the legislature, who will automatically become president after José Jerí was removed on Tuesday amid allegations of influence peddling and suspicious links to Chinese businessmen.

In an extraordinary session on Wednesday, lawmakers weighed four bids for the speakership: María del Carmen Alva (Popular Action), José María Balcázar (Free Peru/Perú Libre), Héctor Acuña (Honor and Democracy) and Edgard Reymundo (Popular Democratic Bloc). No candidate secured the required majority in the first count, triggering a runoff between the top two vote-getters: Balcázar and Alva.

The tally reported during the session showed Balcázar with 46 votes and Alva with 43, while Acuña drew 13 and Reymundo 7, eliminating the latter two from the contest. Acting congressional vice president Fernando Rospigliosi said the second round would proceed immediately, with the winner decided by a simple majority.

The incoming president will serve a five-month interim term and must hand over power on July 28 to the winner of the April 12 general election. In the 24 hours following Jerí’s ouster, Peru was formally without a president in office, while ministers remained in place for administrative duties.

Jerí’s removal —the 39-year-old lawyer had taken office four months earlier after Dina Boluarte’s exit— renewed a parliamentary succession mechanism that has repeatedly been activated in a decade marked by rapid turnover at the top. Wednesday’s runoff will determine whether the presidency goes to a right-leaning lawmaker with prior experience leading Congress (Alva) or to a Perú Libre legislator from the party that brought Pedro Castillo to power in 2021 (Balcázar).