Peru: interim president Manuel Merino announces his resignation

Pushed to resign by the street and the political class, the interim president of Peru, Manuel Merino, announced his resignation on Sunday, five days after his contested accession to the presidency of the country.

Manuel Merino said in a televised address, the day after the violent crackdown on demonstrators demanding his departure, which left at least three dead and a hundred wounded.

Scenes of jubilation immediately took place in the streets of the capital.

Read also: Peru: three dead during protests against the new president

Parliament must now appoint a new president from among its members, the third in less than a week after the dismissal by the same assembly of Martin Vizcarra, popular president defaulted by an expeditious procedure that testifies to the fragility of Peruvian institutions.

A plenary session was called at 4 p.m. local time to appoint a new president who could be from the centrist Morado party, the only one who opposed Martin Vizcarra's dismissal.

Manuel Merino said that to avoid a

, the 18 ministers he appointed on Thursday would stay in their posts temporarily, although the majority of them resigned after the repression of protests on Saturday.

An "unsustainable" situation

At least three people were killed in Lima on another day of protests suppressed by police.

Protesters, mostly young, demanded Manuel Merino's resignation, rejecting what they see as a parliamentary coup.

Parliament voted on Monday to dismiss the very popular President Martin Vizcarra, accused of corruption, and his replacement by Manuel Merino, until then at the head of Parliament and who then appointed a conservative as prime minister.

After a whole night of clashes in the capital, the leaders of the nine parliamentary groups had started an emergency meeting behind closed doors shortly before 9 am, on the initiative of the new head of Parliament Luis Valdez, deeming

the situation

politics of Peru.

Luis Valdez announced shortly before Manuel Merino's televised address, threatening to initiate impeachment proceedings. 'he was not leaving power.

Calls for resignation had multiplied in the face of the explosive situation in the country with demonstrations in several cities and thousands of people gathered in the capital.

The appointment to the presidency of Manuel Merino, a 59-year-old center-right agricultural engineer, has since Tuesday sparked protests across the country.