Peruvian Prime Minister Aníbal Torres resigns, the fourth of the Castillo Administration

First modification: 03/08/2022 – 19:45

After almost six months as Prime Minister of Peru, Aníbal Torres resigned from his position. In a letter addressed to the country’s president, Pedro Castillo, this Wednesday, August 3, the official indicated that his decision is due to “personal reasons.”

With the departure of the prime minister, the fourth to leave office in the year of President Castillo’s volatile and controversial administration on July 28, all members of the cabinet must present their resignation to the head of state.

This tradition in Peru pushes all the ministers to place their positions at the disposal of the president once the prime minister resigns, in charge of coordinating the members of the cabinet and managing the relations of the Executive with the other powers of the State.

This will cause a reorganization at a time when Castillo, who admits that he has made mistakes during his first year in office, is being investigated by the Prosecutor for five cases of alleged corruption, including:

– For allegedly leading a criminal organization within the Executive.

– For alleged corruption and aggravated collusion in a public works project.

– For plagiarism in his university thesis.

– And for influence peddling in a state fuel procurement contract.

At least two of the main implicated in these cases, the former Minister of Transport, Juan Silva, and the nephew of the president, Fray Vásquez, are fugitives from Justice and the National Police offers a reward to achieve their location and capture.

In addition, Torres’s resignation comes amid the judicial siege of the president, who has faced two attempts to remove him from Congress -even more unpopular than Castillo with 85% disapproval, according to the latest survey by the Institute of Peruvian Studies-, and It has a disapproval of 74% according to several polls in the country.

The arguments of Aníbal Torres to leave office

Torres, 79, accompanied Castillo in his presidential campaign, then entered the Executive as Minister of Justice last year -in the Government’s first ministerial cabinet- and then assumed the position of chief of staff on February 8, during which time which the Government has accumulated about 60 ministers in the different portfolios due to the continuous changes in the cabinet, due, according to analysts, to the president’s lack of experience in public management.

In the letter published on social networks, Torres thanked Castillo. “I take this opportunity to thank you for the trust placed in me, first as Minister of Justice, and then as Premier.”

And he added that he is retiring from office “after having served, together with you (Pedro Castillo), our country, especially the most neglected and forgotten people (…) Today I have to return to the university classrooms with my students and students, and return to what she missed the most: legal research,” she says in the letter.

Division among legislators due to the resignation of Aníbal Torres

After learning of Torres’s resignation, and what his resignation entails, legislators from different political groups commented on his passage through the Executive. Opposition congressmen had already asked for his departure.

The ungrouped congressman Esdras Medina (former member of Renovación Popular), referred to the prime minister’s resignation as good for the Executive and pointed out that, despite Torres’s resignation, the instability in Peru does not stop.

For Congressman José Luna of Podemos Peru, Torres’ decision should motivate Castillo to the same decision to step aside for all the accusations against him.

Tania Ramírez, a Fujimori congresswoman, indicated that she hopes that the Prosecutor’s Office does its job and investigates Aníbal Torres, since, according to what she indicated, “there are testimonies that identify him as the operator to obstruct investigations in the Bruno Pacheco case.”

For his part, the independent congressman, Edward Málaga, told the local radio station ‘RPP’ that Torres, “being a political spokesman and responsible for the acts of the Government, is part of this entire mechanism of institutional takeover of the State, the wrong appointments in the ministries; in addition to a speech full of social resentment (…) there is little good to remember about this administration”.

Malaga expressed its doubts that Castillo would convene “good cadres” to replace Torres and did not consider it possible that “good cadres approach this government so tainted by corruption.”

Meanwhile, parliamentarian Édgar Tello, from the Magisterial Bloc, the closest to Pedro Castillo, pointed out that Torres’s resignation is a “very important loss” in the Government and asked the president that his successor be a person “dialoguing, from the field” and that “it can pick up the problems of the population”.

With AFP, AP, EFE and local media