Nobel prize-winning author Mario Vargas Llosa has praised Peru’s president Martín Vizcarra for dismissing the country’s rightwing opposition-dominated parliament which he said was made up of “semi-illiterate swindlers”.

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In a high point of Peru’s constitutional crisis, Vizcarra dissolved Congress on 30 September, saying he wanted to defend Peru from what he described as a corrupt mafia. No public institution or foreign power has backed the opposition’s charge that the move was illegal and amounted to a coup.

“He’s done well shutting Congress. It was a shame for Peru, a Congress of semi-illiterates, of swindlers,” Vargas Llosa told reporters in Madrid. The author is arguably the world’s most famous living Peruvian, known for his strong pro-democracy stance.

“I hope that in January when they elect a new Congress, citizens will choose better,” he said during the presentation of his new book Fierce Times, adding that democracies of today are vulnerable to corruption, populism and demagoguery.

Vargas Llosa, who lives in Madrid, ran for president in Peru in 1990, losing to Alberto Fujimori. After running the country for 10 years, Fujimori ended up fleeing to Japan amid accusations of corruption and human rights violations and was later sentenced to prison in Peru.

The writer is one of the most significant figures of the 1960-70s literary movement known as the Latin American boom. His most successful novels, often dealing with issues of dictatorship and democracy, include The Time of the Hero and The Feast of the Goat.