Crisis in Peru: Dina Boluarte renews the government after a week with 21 dead in protests

Peru’s President Dina Boluarte renewed her cabinet on Friday by switching interior, labor and women ministers, after the escalation of violence in anti-government protests that have totaled nearly fifty deaths since December, 21 of them in La last week.

In a deed at the Government Palace, announced minutes before it was to take place, Boluarte swore Vicente Romero Fernández, Luis Alfonso Adrianzen and Nancy Tolentino to occupy the portfolios of the Interior, Labor and Women respectively, after accepting their resignations of its predecessors.

The first to notify the departure of the cabinet headed by Prime Minister Alberto Otárola, and which this Tuesday was invested by Congress, was the now former Minister of Labor, Eduardo García Birimisa, who presented his letter of resignation on Thursday and asked Boluarte to apologize and acknowledge the errors in his government’s response to citizens’ protests calling for his resignation.

The interior portfolio will be occupied by Romero Fernández, who will take over from Víctor Rojas Herrera and will have the great challenge of directing the Peruvian National Police (PNP) and directing the institutional response to the protests.

The Interior has been the ministry with the most changes since Boluarte took over the country’s presidency last December, when Rojas Herrera was sworn in just over three weeks ago to replace César Augusto Cervantes, who lasted just ten days in charge.

Romero Fernández is a retired PNP general and served as Interior Minister for three months under former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski’s tenure (2016-2018). He headed the PNP between 2015 and 2017, when Otárola was defense minister in former President Ollanta Humala’s government (2011-2016).

In Labour, García, who in submitting his resignation had been emphatic in defending that the country needs “a change of face in its direction and an advance on the elections”, was replaced by the lawyer Adrianzen, who until now he served as general secretary of Otárola’s office and had previously been appointed adviser to the Ministry of Defence, when it was headed by the current prime minister.

The new head of Labor was also director general of the Ministry of Production during the management of Jorge Luis Prado in the government of former president Pedro Castillo (2021-2022).

The Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations is now headed by psychologist Nancy Tolentino, who served as executive director of a program in the same portfolio in 2012.

Previously, Tolentino served as Acting National Delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States (OAS) and worked as a Spanish Cooperation Advisor to the Congressional Table of Peruvian Parliamentarians.

Source: EFE