Peru: in the midst of the “Rolex watch scandal”, the Prime Minister asks for the confidence of Parliament

The new Prime Minister of Peru, Gustavo Adrianzen, will ask for a vote of confidence in Parliament this Wednesday, April 3, at a time when a scandal linked to luxury Rolex watches is shaking the fragile government of President Dina Boluarte.

Gustavo Adrianzen AFP - JUAN PABLO AZABACHE

By: RFI with AFP

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Gustavo Adrianzen, a 57-year-old center-right lawyer

, replaced Alberto Otarola in early March after the latter resigned due to an investigation into influence peddling. The Peruvian Constitution provides that within thirty days of the appointment of the Prime Minister, he appears before Parliament to explain his general policy and request a vote of confidence.

The unicameral Parliament is controlled by a majority of right-wing and far-right parties, supporters of Dina Boluarte. For him to obtain a vote of confidence, Gustavo Adrianzen must receive half the votes of the 130 members of Parliament, plus one. Everything suggests that the right will grant it. “ 

We must give a vote of confidence to guarantee governability. We are in a crisis situation ,” MP Jorge Montoya, of the conservative

Renovación popular

 party, assured the press

.

Illicit enrichments linked to Rolex watches

This vote comes at a time when

President Dina Boluarte

is involved in several cases, the latest of which concerns alleged acts of illicit enrichment linked to Rolex watches that she is suspected of not having declared as part of her assets. His home in the suburbs of Lima as well as his presidential office were searched on March 30 as part of this affair. No watch was found and the prosecution ordered her to present them when summoned to court on Friday.

On April 2, Attorney General Juan Villena announced that the investigation now also focused on jewelry, including a bracelet worth $56,000, and bank deposits of some $270,000 between 2021 and 2022. The scandal , dubbed by the press "Rolexgate", broke out on March 15, when a news site published a series of photos showing Dina Boluarte wearing different luxury watches while she was in government in 2021 and 2022.

Six new ministers and a third request for dismissal

Dina Boluarte, whose popularity rating does not exceed 10% in surveys, assured that she had “clean hands” and only owned one watch. In the wake of the searches, six of the 18 government ministers announced their resignations on Monday. If the Minister of the Interior cited “ 

family problems

 ”, those of Education, Women, Agrarian Development, Production and Foreign Trade provided no reason. In the middle of the night, Dina Boluarte administered the oath to the six new ministers appointed to replace the departing ones.

In the event of prosecution, under the Constitution, she cannot be tried before July 2026, the date of the end of her mandate. The opposition presented a request for dismissal on Saturday March 30 for “

permanent moral incapacity 

”. The motion, presented by

Peru Libre

, the left-wing party to which Dina Boluarte belonged before becoming president, is supported by 30 parliamentarians. But to be admitted to the debate, she must collect more than fifty votes out of the 130. This is the third request for dismissal presented by the left against Dina Boluarte. None has yet been admitted to the debate.

Read also Peru: justice, searches and the watches of President Dina Boluarte

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