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| - Peru's President Martin Vizcarra named a new cabinet chief Thursday in a bid to resolve a dispute with Congress. Vizcarra replaced his previous cabinet chief, Pedro Cateriano, after the entire cabinet resigned following a vote of no confidence in Cateriano by Congress on Tuesday. Cateriano had only been in the post for three weeks. The new cabinet headed by Walter Martos, a retired general who is also defense minister, must now build bridges with Congress, which is controlled by a diverse alliance of populist left-wing and center-right parties. Martos, 62, is the first military man to hold the post of cabinet chief in a decade. He's the fifth cabinet chief named by Vizcarra since he assumed the presidency in March 2018. Martos must appear before Congress within 30 days to explain his plan of government. Congress is demanding that Vizcarra prioritize dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and saving the economy, which was hard hit by almost four months of lockdown measures. But Peru is seeing a marked increase in coronavirus cases and registered a daily record of 221 deaths on Wednesday. Its 7,700 new cases that day were the second highest caseload after the 8,800 recorded on May 31. Peru is the third worst hit country in Latin America from the coronavirus with 447,000 cases and 20,000 deaths amongst its 33 million population. ljc/fj/lda/bc/dw
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