Politics

Peru president grabbed, shaken during visit to Ayacucho

Lima, Jan 20 (EFE).- Peru’s President Dina Boluarte was grabbed and shaken on Saturday by a woman who circumvented security measures in the southern Andean region of Ayacucho, where 10 people were reported killed during the anti-government protests that began at the end of 2022.

Boluarte had participated in laying the first paving stone of a road in three Ayacucho districts, when a woman ducked under a truck parked where the president was standing with her entourage.

Images broadcast by Channel N showed that, despite the large number of security officers and members of the Peruvian National Police (PNP), the woman grabbed the president, whom she shook and scuffled with for a few seconds, until security guards intervened.

Media reported that the woman was the wife of a man fatally shot in Ayacucho during the anti-government demonstrations that broke out across the country after Pedro Castillo was removed from the presidency by Congress, following his failed self-coup in December 2022.

Images released showed that in the midst of the scuffle, some people intervened, including the regional governor of Ayacucho, Wilfredo Oscorima, while PNP officers escorted the woman away.

Boluarte had traveled to Ayacucho on Saturday for the first time since the anti-government protests, although her presence was rejected by family members and people who protested the deaths that occurred there.

During one of her speeches, on the occasion of the beginning of drinking water and sewage works, the head of State pointed out that the ideologies that are spread “in a minority way” do not feed poverty, but rather “generate misery, backwardness, sorrow and pain.”

“That is why we are here, to lay the first stone in concrete works that can change the face of our compatriots, with joy, so that the brothers of Ayacucho can have life and health,” she said to the applause of another large group of citizens.

The president added that Ayacucho has been forgotten for decades by the authorities and highlighted that “a female president had to come to treat all Peruvians as her children.”

“This Andean woman, daughter of men and women farmers like you, knows perfectly what poverty is like, what hunger is like, what cold is like,” she emphasized.

The president added that, for this reason, “Ayacucho is a priority” for her government and “history must be rewritten with development, progress and well-being.” EFE

dub/tw

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