Three months after completing two years in power, President Dina Boluarte carried out her sixth change of ministers this Tuesday afternoon. If her predecessor, the imprisoned Pedro Castillo, appointed 78 ministers in 495 days of government, the lawyer is not far from that presidential failure when it comes to forming a cabinet that inspires a minimum of confidence and decency and thus glimpses a less uncertain horizon. In 636 days of mandate, Boluarte has made 53 ministerial appointments, obtaining an average of one minister every twelve days.
In the last few hours, there has been speculation about a new change of leadership in more than one portfolio. If in April the president removed six ministers to receive a vote of confidence from Congress, amid the scandal of her collection of luxury watches, this time the crisis is based on audio recordings where the Minister of the Interior, Juan José Santiváñez, allegedly confessed that the Government is covering up for Vladimir Cerrón, the founding leader of Peru Libre, the party that brought Castillo to power and Boluarte as presidential successor. The revelation shows that he would have used a presidential vehicle to escape at the beginning of the year, when they had already found his whereabouts. Cerrón was sentenced to three years and six months in prison for irregularities in the construction of an aerodrome when he was regional governor of Junín. On October 6, he will complete one year in hiding.
However, Santiváñez, who has denied the veracity of the audios and has also threatened the press for having spread them, has received a boost from Boluarte who has chosen to maintain them despite the criticism. The Minister of Health, César Vásquez Sánchez, was also on the ropes, questioned for the low academic level of the evaluations that future doctors must pass to access vacancies in the Rural and Marginal Urban Health Service (Serums). The Minister of Agrarian Development, Ángel Manero, was also in the spotlight for stating that “in Peru there is no hunger”, thus ignoring a study by the FAO that indicates that more than 17 million Peruvians cannot guarantee their daily meals. Likewise, the Minister of Education, Morgan Quero, was accused of maintaining that the sexual violations of girls from indigenous communities are “cultural practices”.
Despite having done all the merits, none of them were ousted and instead received the vote of confidence from the Executive. Precisely, President Boluarte began the day in the company of Morgan Quero, at the inauguration of a school, where she was seen with a different face and even dared to dance Amazonian cumbia with one of the students. The day before, Boluarte had had thirteen official meetings to rearrange his chessboard. “Corruption is a cancer that must be ended and eliminated because that way we can build more schools. We do not just talk, but we demonstrate with actions. […]”We are a government of facts and not of false hopes,” he said, repeating a well-known speech.
The Head of State arrived at the Palace shortly before noon for the swearing-in ceremony of the four new ministers: Elmer José Germán Gonzalo Schialer Salcedo (Foreign Affairs), Úrsula Desilú (Foreign Trade and Tourism), Durich Whittembury Talledo (Housing, Construction and Sanitation) and Fabricio Valencia Gibaja (Culture). Javier González Olaechea (Foreign Affairs), Elizabeth Galdo Marín (Foreign Trade and Tourism), Hania Pérez de Cuéllar (Housing, Construction and Sanitation) and Leslie Urteaga (Culture) are leaving.
González Olaechea will be remembered for supporting the release of former President Alberto Fujimori, even though this meant disobeying an order from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as well as for his belligerent behavior in an OAS session to brand the Venezuelan elections fraudulent, and, of course, for the deep nap he took in the chamber during Dina Boluarte’s speech for Fiestas Patrias. Leslie Urteaga, for his part, leaves the Ministry of Culture with a majority rejection for belatedly observing a law that undermines regional cinema, and for having allowed a private company to take charge of the sale of tickets to Machu Picchu without a public tender.
Hania Pérez de Cuéllar is leaving the Housing portfolio after having accompanied Dina Boluarte throughout her mandate, and being one of her most faithful squires. When last year the president of Peru had a failed meeting with Joe Biden and her press apparatus tried to save the situation with some photos on the fly, assuring that it was an official meeting, Pérez de Cuéllar condemned the fact that she was not believed, arguing that “we are being victims of the dictatorship of suspicion”. Finally, Elizabeth Galdo Marín will be remembered for seriously indicating that Peru will export donkey meat to the People’s Republic of China.
The new Chancellor, Elmer Schialer, has immediately spoken out against the Nicolás Maduro regime, with statements that say a lot about how Peru will now face the Venezuelan crisis after the elections: “Peru’s position is firm, democratic and in favor of Venezuela’s problems being resolved by Venezuelans.” In this way, President Boluarte gets rid of some squires, but keeps others who are highly questioned in her cabinet. In addition, she makes it clear that, although in her speech she usually praises her status as a woman, the issue of parity matters little to her: of the nineteen ministries, only two are led by women: Foreign Trade and Tourism and the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations. It is no coincidence that she plans to merge it with the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion and eliminate it.
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