The Minister of the Environment, Adrián Peña, has been criticized for having declared having a degree in Business Administration before having obtained the degree. Despite having begun his studies at the Catholic University in 2000, Peña only received his bachelor’s degree in 2022, according to a note published by the weekly Búsqueda on Thursday.
For years, Peña allowed others to attribute that tertiary title to him and even, as a minister, signed official documents that described him as a graduate when I still didn’t have the title. Peña justified this by saying that it could have happened on some occasion in which she did not realize the error and that she even processed a change in her Wikipedia profile to clarify.
However, this has been considered a lack of ethics on the part of the Minister, since he invoked his university studies to give his opinion on a bill while he had not yet obtained the title. This has raised questions about the credibility of his statements and has called into question his ability to make important decisions in his role as Minister. “I do know that most of what he signed does not say that, but sometime it could be, I don’t know,” he said when questioned by the weekly.
Appears as a graduate in official documents
In the curriculum of the hierarch and leader of the Colorado Party, which he created for the period 2015-2020, when he was a parliamentarian, he was presented as “Lic. Adrián Peña”, being the abbreviation “Lic.” for “graduate”.
In a document that is hosted on the web of the Ministry of the Environment, dated and signed on June 21, 2021, at 10:30 a.m., quotes “Mr. Ministry Licenciado Adrián Peña”. This document draws up the minutes corresponding to the National Environmental Award “Uruguay, País Natural” in its 2021 call.
According to Search, he can also be read as “graduate” in the first paragraph of the Agreement for cooperation in the field of environment and sustainable development between the Ministry of Environment of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay and the Ministry of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica. For the government of Luis Lacalle Pou, “Mr. Adrián Peña, a graduate in Business Administration” did it.
