The Minister of the Environment, Adrián Peña, apologized this Thursday for having held a university degree since at least 2015, but which in reality he did not have until 2022. As he explained, he studied a Bachelor of Business Administration at the Catholic University , but that although he passed all the subjects years ago, he had not presented the thesis until last year.
The last subject approved before the thesis was on August 1, 2006. The thesis was defended and approved on September 7, 2022.
“What clearly emerges there in these statements that are publicly known are some instances in which I speak as a graduate, in some shorthand version, basically from the year 2018 when I was a deputy, which had to do with that, with the tad I was missing to receive me and it was not really the center of what he was talking about, “he said.
“Obviously this is an error, as in those cases in which the vast majority of cases I clarified that I still did not have the title, because that was something known that had not defended the thesis, but somewhere that was presented to me without it existing clarification,” he said.
“The truth is that there I should have also made the clarification that it is what appears in the weekly (Search), that it is not false, that it is true, that it is an error that I have no problem recognizing”, continued the leader also of the Colorado Party.
“I think I was wrong there. Undoubtedly, I never intended to deceive anyone, it didn’t make sense either, ”she said.
He says he never worked as a graduate
He denies having served as a graduate and that this title did not define that he was appointed to any position, not even as Minister of the Environment. “There are some mistakes there, some personal, some from my team that I assume as a leader. They are mistakes for which I apologize today that I am a public person, ”he emphasized.
Peña also called the President of the Republic, Luis Lacalle Pou, to offer his apologies for what happened and remarked that “what is important to him is that I actually completed my degree as I have just demonstrated. There is all the schooling, I passed all the subjects, I passed them all, then, some time later, I submitted the thesis, defended it and saved it. He told me that this was the transcendental thing”.
“It is not my intention, in any case, to affect the president or the government, and for that I apologized,” he remarked.
Regarding the curriculum that was presented when he arrived in Parliament in 2015, he blamed his team but concluded by saying that it was wrong.
