LIMA – It was a big day for the accidental president of Peru, Dina Boluartewhose official schedule has been empty for months.

Thursday, the high-profile one Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation the Lima summit thrust Boluarte — among the world’s least popular presidents, with a public approval rating of just 4 percent — into the bright lights of a convention center packed with world leaders, prominent CEOs and dignitaries in visit.

It’s not just that Boluarte, long a low-paid civil servant, has never touched the red carpet for powerful leaders like US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping since she took office in December 2022. It’s that she hasn’t been seen outside her brick mansion in weeks. Local journalists count more than 100 days since the last conversation with a reporter.

Her recent reclusion is not particularly surprising. He became president because he was vice president of Pedro Castillo, a former rural school teacher with no previous political experience who was removed when he tried to dissolve Congress and abolish the courts. A wave of violent protests shook the country, spoiling Boluarte’s first weeks to power.

The president’s popularity has plummeted even more so in March, when the sight of Rolex watches glinting from her wrist prompted police to raid her home and prosecutors to start an investigation in her assumption illegal enrichment.

A poll by polling company Ipsos showed her approval had dropped to just 4%. The poll was conducted between October 10-11, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. No president in Peru has had a worse rating in at least 40 years.

Powerful lawmakers, content with their lavish salaries, resisted calls to fire her but quietly absorbed most of her duties, leaving Boluarte with little to do.

The latest lightning rod for public anger has been a growing trend of violent extortion by criminal gangs in Lima’s hardscrabble suburbs. Protesters who accuse the government of indifference to rising crime have taken to the streets of Peru.

Protesters blocked highways and rallied in Peru’s southeastern Arequipa region on Wednesday, prompting a police crackdown that left six injured by rubber bullets. Lima residents also took advantage of the international spotlight to stage protests this week as Biden and 20 other world leaders prepared to gather for the APEC summit.

After a series of killings targeting bus drivers who failed to pay extortion money last month sent a chill through Lima, public transport drivers launched several strikes that paralyzed the city of 10 million. The government declared a state of emergency and promised a strong response, but the persistence of violent attacks fueled anger against Boluarte.

Fearing everything that could go wrong in bringing Peru’s unpopular leader out of the shadows and onto the world stage this week, the government left nothing to chance.

Authorities declared Thursday through Saturday a public holiday and closed schools, ordering millions of schoolchildren and civil servants to stay home all week to keep the streets clean. At a highway underpass near the convention center hosting APEC on Monday, workers cleaned the spray-painted slogan “Dina Asesina” or “Dina the Killer” from a concrete wall.

“The event is certainly important for Peru, but the government is so afraid of losing control of the streets that it overreacts by implementing inappropriate measures,” said Eduardo Dargent, a political scientist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

Officials asked citizens not to protest.

“It would be very regrettable if, on days when we receive visitors from the world’s 21 most powerful economies, we show a bad show, a show of conflict,” Prime Minister Gustavo Adrianzen said in a recent press conference. President Boluarte went further, branding the protests “traitorous”.

On Thursday, protesters said the specter of conflict at APEC was exactly what they wanted.

As Boluarte, dressed in a bright pink dress and pearls, greeted Chinese President Xi with a ceremonial honor guard and a blaring trumpet, police clashed with anti-government protesters a few blocks away.

“He’s trying to use this moment in front of the TV cameras to pretend he’s the president of Peru,” said Betty Mendoza, a 35-year-old protester who was holding portraits of the 50 civilian protesters killed in the 2022 social unrest.

“She doesn’t represent us,” Mendoza said of Boluarte. “We didn’t choose it.”

At one point on Thursday, masked protesters moved towards a police line near the conference venue, pushing officers who pushed them back and beat them with batons. Medics rushed to attend to several teenagers clutching their heads and screaming in pain.

“My grandson is growing up in a country where violence is normalized,” said Freda Reyes, 54, who had come to protest from the working-class eastside neighborhood of Santa Anita, where she said 10 of her neighbors had been killed. of criminal gangs this month.

The last time Peru hosted APEC, in 2016, a wave of protests similarly erupted across the country. At the time, workers were on strike over their low wages, and Lima residents were overwhelmed by their city’s notoriously neglected public infrastructure.

That remains a concern. On Wednesday, a fire tore through the sides of a multi-story plastic toy warehouse and engulfed six other houses near the presidential palace, causing no injuries but sending a plume of black smoke visible from the red carpet where Boluarte he was giving him a medal. The Malaysian counterpart.

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Associated Press writer Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru contributed to this report.