Who is Manuel Merino, the next president of Pe …

After the dismissal of the president Martin vizcarra Due to the ambiguous figure of “permanent moral incapacity”, the head of the unicameral Congress of Peru, Manuel Merino, will become this Tuesday the next president of the South American country.

And despite the fact that in a few hours the executive power of Peru will manage, Merino is not one of the best-known figures in the local political arena. This 59-year-old agricultural and livestock engineer was a second-line politician still linked to the Popular Action (AP), the centrist party founded in 1956 by Fernando Belaunde Terry.

In Merino’s CV, in addition to his professional background, The bank occupied in Congress for two periods stands out: 2001-2006 and 2011-2016. The two posts represented the northwestern department of Tumbes, the homeland of Merino.

Merino returned to Congress in January this year, when elections were held to choose Parliament after Vizcarra dissolved the previous one in September 2019. The victory of the PA – the first minority in parliament – sent him to the chair of the body. But the flashes eventually settled on him on the first unsuccessful attempt to remove Vizcarra: The head of the Peruvian Parliament knocked unsuccessfully on the barracks door to ask for military support to take power.

Merino later issued a public apology. “Maybe calling under the circumstances of that day was perhaps inappropriate, which is why I express my sincere apologies to the armed forces,” he said after two senior military officials informed the ministry. Defense that Merino had called on them to seek approval of the two vacancy processes that Congress was about to discuss.

The first big question the next president will have to decide – he will be sworn in on Tuesday at 5 p.m. local time – is whether to call an election immediately (as set out in the Constitution) or wait until April 11, a date that had now former President Vizcarra scheduled for the next national vote.