The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, renewed her cabinet this Friday by changing the ministers of the Interior, Labor and Women, following the escalation of violence in the anti-government protests that add up to almost fifty deaths since December, 21 of them in the last week.
In an act at the Government Palace, announced minutes before it was to take place, Boluarte swore in Vicente Romero Fernández, Luis Alfonso Adrianzen and Nancy Tolentino, to occupy the Interior, Labor and Women’s portfolios, respectively, following accepting the resignation of his predecessors.
The first to notify the departure of the cabinet led 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 resignation letter on Thursday and asked Boluarte to ask apologies and acknowledge mistakes in his government’s response to the citizen 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 assumed the presidency of the country last December, as Rojas Herrera was sworn in just over three weeks ago to replace César Augusto Cervantes, who only lasted ten days in office.
Romero Fernández is a retired general of the PNP and was Minister of the Interior for three months under the mandate of former president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (2016-2018). He led the PNP between 2015 and 2017, when Otárola was Minister of Defense in the Government of former President Ollanta Humala (2011-2016).
In Labor, García, who was emphatic in defending that the country needs “a change of faces in its direction and an advance of elections” when presenting his resignation, was replaced by the lawyer Adrianzen, who until now held the position of general secretary of the Otárola’s office and had previously been appointed as an adviser to the Ministry of Defense, when it was headed by the now prime minister.
The new head of Labor was also general manager 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 directed by psychologist Nancy Tolentino, who in 2012 was executive director of a program in the same portfolio.
Previously, Tolentino had been a substitute national delegate to the Inter-American Commission of Women of the Organization of American States (OAS) and worked as a consultant for the Spanish Cooperation for the Table of Peruvian Women Parliamentarians of the Congress. EFE
