LIMA/ BUENOS AIRES, Nov 26 — Peruvian President Pedro Castillo has appointed the fifth prime minister since taking office, his press service announced.
On Friday, Castillo accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Anibal Torres.
“President Pedro Castillo swears in the new president of the Council of Ministers, Betssy Chavez Chino, at the Government Palace,” Sputnik reported, quoting the Peruvian presidency as saying in a statement later on Friday. A video of the official ceremony was also published.
Chavez is the fifth person to assume the presidency of the Council of Ministers in just over a year of Castillo’s administration, an unprecedented event in the history of Peru, Sputnik reported.
On Thursday, Peru’s opposition-controlled Congress rejected leftist Torres’ request to hold a confidence vote. In his address, Torres sought the repeal of a law, which establishes that all constitutional reform initiatives submitted to a referendum must first be approved by Congress.
Earlier in November, a Congressional commission approved a proposal to deprive Castillo of the right to hold public office for five years. The Subcommittee on Constitutional Accusations also recommended that immunity be removed from the president, who is under investigation amid the opposition’s accusations of Castillo having committed treason.
In July, the prosecutor general’s office announced that it was investigating Castillo, after accusations were made by former minister of the interior Mariano Gonzalez, who alleged that Castillo had covered for people from his immediate entourage, against whom criminal cases had been initiated.
In early August, Peruvian prosecutors raided the government palace in the capital city of Lima, as well as the home of the country’s president in Chota, northern Peru, looking for Yenifer Paredes, the sister of the country’s First Lady Lilia Paredes Navarro, who, like the head of state, is suspected of corruption. At the end of August, Yenifer got 30 months of preventive detention.
Castillo has denied all accusations made against him and his family members.
Mass protests were held across Peru earlier this month with people demanding that the president resign.
— Bernama
