Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil (left) and Peruvian President José Jerí (right). Photo: Telesur/EFE.
Venezuelan Minister for Foreign Affairs Yván Gil criticized the meeting between his Peruvian counterpart, Hugo de Zela, and Venezuelan far-right opposition figure María Corina Machado, where they discussed a “swift recovery of full democracy in Venezuela.” Gil highlighted that this action by the Peruvian government is “laden with cynicism.”
The Venezuelan minister pointed out the contradiction in the fact that a government “resulting from a coup d’état against President Pedro Castillo, and a subsequent process tainted by illegitimacy, comments on democracy in Venezuela, a country that can give lessons in dignity and constitutional order.”
Gil criticized the statements issued by the Peruvian Foreign Ministry, expressing his desire for the Peruvian people to recover, “sooner rather than later, their true essence as a Bolivarian people, who are today held hostage by those who stole democracy and maintain themselves [in power] without the people’s support, hiding behind speeches full of cynicism.”
The Venezuelan foreign minister’s statement referred to the coup against elected President Pedro Castillo, carried out by the Peruvian parliament in December 2022, in collusion with Castillo’s Vice President Dina Boluarte. Since then, Castillo has remained unjustly imprisoned and banned from holding public office, accused of carrying out a coup himself.
Amid these tensions with Venezuela, the Attorney General’s Office of Peru confirmed on Friday, February 6, that it will interrogate President José Jerí as part of an investigation into the allegedly irregular hiring of five young women to hold positions in the government.
Jerí is embroiled in a political scandal following journalistic revelations indicating that five young women were hired by Peruvian authorities after they had held private meetings with the president. The meetings are said to have taken place between October and November 2025, during non-working hours, before the young women were hired without following established procedures, reported Telesur.
Jerí is technically a de facto president, having assumed the position after Dina Boluarte, who had held the presidency since the overthrow of Pedro Castillo, was impeached by the parliament on the grounds of “permanent moral incapacity” on October 10, 2025. Thereafter, following the constitutional succession procedure, Jerí, the president of the parliament at that time, was sworn in as the president of Peru. Thus, he became the seventh president of Peru in nine years, a period marked by profound institutional instability and coups.
Special for Orinoco Tribune by staff
OT/SC/SF
