The Peruvian Prime Minister announced his immediate resignation this Tuesday. Alberto Otárola, Dina Boluarte's right-hand man, has fallen 48 hours after it was revealed that he offered work to a woman he later harassed with messages and stalked with declarations of love. The president, whose popularity is very low, did not want to keep him in office. Otárola has assured that he is innocent and that everything is an organized campaign against him. This happened after he landed in Lima on a plane from Canada, where he had to interrupt his participation in a mining congress.
“The country witnessed a conspiracy, a plot and a media operation that had been planned for months, involving various characters who operated in secret and pursued vested interests. “They have falsely tried to make the population believe that they have intervened in the employment of one or more people in the state, although this is a hoax,” the lawyer said at a press conference after meeting President Dina Boluarte at the palace. Shortly thereafter, Otárola blamed former President Martín Vizcarra for the audio broadcast in a Sunday broadcast in which he asked for his CV and called Yaziré Pinedo Vásquez, a worker who benefited from two contracts with the state for 53,000 soles (14,324) in the summer of 2023 thousand dollars).
“I have no doubt that Mr. Martín Vizcarra is behind all this. “Him and his team of corrupt people,” he said dissatisfiedly. Vizcarra succeeded Pedro Pablo Kuczynski at the palace and ruled Peru between 2018 and 2020. He was fired for alleged corruption crimes. In addition, his image was tarnished by Vacunagate, an international scandal that exposed the trafficking of Covid-19 vaccines in Peru during the first wave. Vizcarra was secretly vaccinated against the virus with the vaccine. In the last hours, Pinedo, who admitted to having had a short romantic relationship with Otárola, assured that the audio recording in question was manipulated and that the conversation in question took place in January 2021, when Otárola did not hold public office.
It was Pinedo himself who denounced that Nicanor Boluarte, the president's brother, was behind the alleged conspiracy and has been questioned in recent months for favoring close associates of his in contracts with the state. However, Otárola cleared him of the conspiracy. “I was surprised that they appointed Mr. Nicanor Boluarte. “I am sure he is not part of this conspiracy,” he said, perhaps in a final gesture of loyalty to the president.
The day before, Alberto Otárola's fate was doomed: nine of the eleven factions in Congress called on him to resign. In addition, a group of lawmakers filed three constitutional complaints against him. One of them proposes that he be banned from holding public office for ten years. The Rosary of Crimes: Influence, Collusion and Irreconcilable Negotiations.
Alberto Otárola's departure was announced hours before his conference by Foreign Minister Javier González Olaechea. “The only thing I can tell you after being with the President from seven in the morning to one in the afternoon is that there will be a revitalization of the general policies of the government. […] so that presenting and supporting the confidence of the next Cabinet is not a procedure but a second chance and a second oxygen with prospects for 2024,” he said. This was seen as a betrayal by the outgoing Prime Minister: “I should have made this message and not a misguided and stupid Chancellor.”
In fact, Secretary of State is one of the options Boluarte is considering to lead the new Cabinet. Another of the strongest options is the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Eduardo Arana, who enjoys the approval of Fuerza Popular – a group with great power in the Chamber – because he has supported the pardon of Alberto Fujimori, but who is not free from dust is and straw: He is being investigated for alleged influence in the Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto case, a corruption scandal between judges of the defunct National Judicial Council.
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