Peruvian President Pedro Castillo announced this Monday (31) that he will form a new cabinet of ministers to replace the one led until then by Prime Minister Mirtha Vásquez, who resigned “due to the impossibility of reaching consensus for the benefit of the country”.
“As I have always announced in my speeches, the cabinet is constantly being evaluated. For this reason, I decided to renew it and form a new team,” Castillo wrote on his Twitter account.
However, shortly after the president’s announcement, Vásquez also posted a message on Twitter in which he claimed that, in fact, he had resigned and that his decision had already been accepted by the ruler.
In his message, Castillo only thanked the “support” of Vásquez and the cabinet ministers he formed in October last year, after which he added that his government will continue “on the path of development for the good of the country”.
The Peruvian president announced the changes in the cabinet hours after accepting the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Avelino Guillén, and also dismissing the head of the National Police, Javier Gallardo, who led a confrontation in recent weeks.
Guillén resigned on Friday because he did not feel supported by Castillo in his recommendation to fire Gallardo, with whom he had major disagreements over replacements and promotions within the National Police.
In addition, the two maintained discrepancies over appointments in key police departments and allegations of corruption within the corporation, some of which even claim that bribes of up to $25,000 were paid in the promotion process.
In an interview published this Sunday in the newspaper La República, Guillén said that he “hoped that the President of the Republic would support his minister, but he preferred to remain silent and put himself aside”.
“It’s a resounding silence, because it says a lot, it expressed a position of clear and direct support for the general commander of the police. I feel reassured because, despite all the limitations and enormous challenges, we achieved the goals initially set for ourselves,” he declared.
After Guillén’s resignation, the local press predicted that a crisis could arise in the cabinet, as the minister had the support of the prime minister.
As expected, Vásquez used Twitter this Monday to publish his resignation letter, in which he said that the government has reached “a critical moment” with the crisis generated in the Ministry of the Interior, which he considered part of “a structural problem of corruption in various instances of the State”.
Vásquez, a well-known environmental lawyer and human rights advocate in Peru, took over as prime minister to replace leftist lawmaker Guido Bellido, who generated great controversy during the early months of the Castillo administration because of his radical views.
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