Dina Boluarte became Peru’s first female president after her former boss and predecessor, Pedro Castillo, was ousted and then arrested for trying to illegally shut down Congress.
The 60-year-old Boluarte, a lawyer, was Peru’s vice president, faces the unenviable challenge of healing a divided Peru, where the presidency has been in a battle with Congress for more than a year.
“I am asking for a political truce to form a government of national unity. I am asking for precious time to save the country from corruption and misrule,” Boluarte said in her first speech since being sworn in as the country’s sixth president in just five years.
Boluarte practiced law before her political career and was relatively unknown to most Peruvians until recently. She had a thorny road to the top, as she won less than four percent of the vote in the 2018 elections for president of Surquillo district in Lima, and then lost in the race for a seat in parliament.
However, she rose to prominence alongside Castile as a vice-president on his Peru Libre party list, which triumphed in last year’s elections.
