Last Sunday, José Jerí reached one hundred days in office in the most unwanted way for a president: with his name associated with the suffix that scares away politicians and overthrows governments. If Dina Boluarte was stained with the rolexgatethe scandal of the high-end watch collection that he could not prove, his successor José Jerí is involved in a tangle of contradictions that these days can be summed up in one term: Chifagate. Chinese food restaurants in Peru are known as chifas, and it was in one of them, located in the Lima district of San Borja, that a hooded man was captured entering its facilities on the night of December 26, after hours.
That subject arrived at San Luis Avenue in the presidential car called the Chestaccompanied by a man with a cap. He parked in front of a building, whose first floor is a minimarket selling Chinese products. He went up to the second floor, where the chifa Xin Yan is located, and met in one of the private rooms with the owner: Zhihua Yang, a Chinese businessman who has a deck of businesses ranging from the security sector to the construction of hydroelectric plants. The uncovering of the program End Point confirmed that the hooded man was none other than the public official who has worn the presidential sash since October 10: José Jerí.
Jerí did not deny it and, in accordance with his way of doing politics, responded first with a tweet: he assured that the secret meeting was for the preparations for the Friendship Day between Peru and China that will be held in the Palace on February 1. “Something different had to be done and we are working on that logic,” he said at the outset. But days later he changed his version: he said that he had not called the meeting and that he was a guest for “other private activities” that he did not specify. The efforts of the supposed celebrations of the brotherhood between Peru and China were left aside.
What’s more, Jerí tried to distance himself from the former ruler, Pedro Castillo, questioned for dispatching outside the Palace in a house in Jirón Sarratea, in the district of Breña. “I am not Pedro Castillo nor am I a professor. I am a lawyer, I know the laws, what I should do and what I should not do,” he said. He justified his unregistered visit, lacking the protocols required by his position, saying that he has not stopped carrying out his daily activities and that, like any other citizen, he had gone to dinner. “I am a president who is on the street, who goes to buy his things, who eats chifa,” he added.
On Saturday the unexpected happened: the official account of the Executive uploaded a video at two in the morning. It was Jerí, in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, in the presidential office, giving a message to the nation that lasted almost five minutes. He apologized, ruled out any wrongdoing, and revealed that his companion, the one in the cap, was the Minister of the Interior, Vicente Tiburcio. He maintained that, after walking around Lima, he invited him to eat at “Mr. Johnny’s chifa, who was at his place and whom I have known for a long time through various cultural or social activities.” Zhihua Yang is known in the business world as Jhonny. “If he had asked me for something irregular, I would have automatically cut all ties with him,” he said in his third version of the events.
According to the weekly Hildebrandt in his Thirteenthe clandestine meeting between Jerí and Zhihua Yang or simply Jhonny would have revolved around one topic: an appetizing contract with the State to install video surveillance cameras in 8,000 public transport buses in exchange for 112 million soles (almost three and a half million dollars). “José Jerí has put pressure on the purchase to be completed as quickly as possible since he settled in the Palace,” the publication says. They also indicate that Jerí and Zhihua Yang have known each other since the beginning of 2024, that they were introduced by a congressman with whom the president shared the ranks of the political group Somos Perú, and that the Chinese businessman has visited the Palace on several occasions.
Zhihua Yang is close to power: he was part of the delegation that accompanied Dina Boluarte on her trip to China in mid-2024 and, in addition, he hired the lawyer services of his brother Nicanor Boluarte.
Jerí’s surprise message to the nation, at dawn, was not a delayed reaction, but rather damage control in the face of a second scandal about to break out. The program Fourth Estate transmitted some images where the president of Peru is seen visiting a closed store, a minimarket of Chinese products, also owned by Zhihua Yang, in the Paruro neighborhood, in the Center of Lima. It was January 6, late afternoon. Jerí was not hooded, but he was wearing dark glasses. The security cameras captured him again with the businessman. At some point, Jerí speaks on the phone and appears visibly upset.
“He has just made a very serious mistake of going covertly, in strange clothes, to a meeting with a Chinese businessman who had visited the Palace and giving a non-credible explanation for that meeting. Obviously, suspicion of influence peddling has automatically arisen,” says political analyst Luis Benavente.
The Peru Libre bench is collecting signatures to present a vacancy motion due to moral incapacity against Jerí. “We will see the political strength it can maintain in Congress. Let us remember that the parties represented in the Chamber are in competition for the general elections on April 12. Supporting someone who is visibly involved in influence peddling is something they will have to consider,” adds Benavente.
José Carlos Requena, for his part, summarizes Jerí’s hundred days in a communicational emphasis, amplified by social networks, which is diluted when he delves into his problems to lead vital things for the country such as the fight against crime. “As contradictory as it may seem, the main successes and failures rest on the same thing. It is a mandate based on communication that leaves aside all aspects of management. Although its effectiveness gives it greater proximity to public opinion, it distracts it from the underlying issue: governing. Although he has not been elected, he leads the Executive and that is something that is not felt,” he says.
The Prime Minister, Ernesto Álvarez, has come out to defend Jerí, alleging that he had been scammed. “These Chinese would have offered a great mega-event for the president to show off and establish evidence of a great relationship with China. It is a deception, a deception that had as a background requests of different levels or degrees, from the largest to the most precarious and petty.” One of Zhihua Yang’s visits to the Palace was with Ji Wu Xiaodong, a Chinese businessman linked to an alleged criminal organization dedicated to illegal timber trafficking. He Chifagate It has shaken a president with three months in office who was going “full steam ahead” and whose government will end on July 28. Although for now nothing is said. Let’s see what the fortune cookies say.
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