The president of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced on Tuesday night (8) the fourth occupant of the post of prime minister in just over six months of government. Aníbal Torres, 79, who has held the Justice portfolio since the first cabinet appointments, will be the prime minister who will finally try to get the leftist leader’s mandate in gear.
Earlier, the president had promised to announce a “more participatory and broad-based” ministerial team. Torres’ appointment came exactly a week after that of Héctor Valer, the target of much criticism after the Peruvian press revealed that he was accused in 2016 of having assaulted his daughter and ex-wife; the politician denies.
Peruvian law dictates that the cabinet appointed by the president must receive a vote of confidence from Congress. The chances of approval of the team led by Valer became very slim after the president of Parliament, the opposition María del Carmen Alva, asked for his resignation, and even three cabinet colleagues questioned him publicly.
On Friday (4), then, three days after appointing the prime minister, Castillo promised changes in the cabinet – made official this Tuesday. The question now becomes how the name of Torres will be received among parliamentarians. The session for the vote of confidence must be held within 30 days, and the president, in any case, said that this Wednesday (9) the first ministerial meeting of the new team will be held.
Peruvian law requires that the entire cabinet be reappointed when a new prime minister is nominated (although some can be ratified), and Castillo took the opportunity to replace other names that had been the subject of dispute: Katy Ugarte (Woman) and Wilber Supo ( Ambiente) will be replaced by Diana Miloslavich Túpac and Modesto Montoya, respectively.
Of the 19 holders named with Héctor Valer, 6 have now been replaced, including the prime minister. In addition to a name faithful to him at the head of the Council of Ministers, Castillo also brought to the team, in the Health Ministry, a politician close to Vladimir Cerrón, leader of Peru Libre – Hernán Condori Machado.
The president is affiliated with the party, but has a conflicting relationship with the bench. On Monday night, the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported that Castillo had met Cerrón at the palace.
Among others, three names that had already been nominated in the last exchange were kept: Óscar Graham in the Economy, César Landa in Foreign Affairs and Alfonso Chávarry in the Interior.
The first replaced Pedro Francke, a moderate who was criticized by the most left wing of the president’s party, but who had the approval of the market. And the latter occupies the folder that was the trigger for the current crisis.
Avelino Guillén, who was the fourth minister in charge of the Interior, resigned on the 28th after he clashed with the commander-in-chief of the National Police, Javier Gallardo, for opposing a series of changes in officers. The then prime minister, the moderate leftist Mirtha Vásquez, entered the circuit and had been trying to get him off the idea, but in the end said she had failed.
When resigning herself, she classified the government’s situation as critical and the issue in Guillén’s portfolio as “an expression of a structural problem of corruption in various instances of the State”..
With the departure of Vásquez and the other changes, in fact, the number of women in the team has fallen again: now there are only three, against five in the prime minister’s office and four in Valer’s.
Since taking office on July 28, after beating Keiko Fujimori by a small margin in the second round, Castillo has already faced calls for an impeachment of the election, the resignation of the head of the Armed Forces shortly before inauguration, an impeachment process that ended rejected in Congress and occasional dismissals of assistants – for controversial statements, denunciations of irregularities and for holding a party amid restrictions imposed by the government to contain the pandemic.
This is without counting the formation of previous cabinets, amid friction with his own party; leaders more to the left of Peru Libre criticized the nomination of names they called “caviares”, more moderate. The first prime minister, Guido Bellido, was responding to prosecutions for corruption and apology for terrorism, for comments praising Sendero Luminoso — a guerrilla that, in conflict with the state, caused the death of more than 70,000 Peruvians.
In previous appointments, Castillo has been tested by fire in Congress. In the first one, two sessions and more than 18 hours were needed to grant the vote of confidence; in the second, there were ten hours of debate, marked by the death of a deputy, who had felt ill hours before.
