2023-11-06 00:32:11
The scandal opened in Uruguay with the hiding of data from Justice due to a passport given to drug trafficker Sebastián Marset continues to cause tremors in the government of President Luis Lacalle Pou and puts the ruling alliance in an unprecedented internal crisis. The case, according to some analysts, also represents a blow to the political system in general.
For the episode, Last Wednesday Francisco Bustillo resigned as head of the Chancellery. Hours after returning from the United States, President Lacalle Pou reported at a press conference on Saturday night that he also accepted the resignations of three other people in the eye of the storm: the minister and vice minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber. and Guillermo Maciel, and the communication advisor to the Presidency, Roberto Lafluf, requested this week by the Frente Amplio (FA), the main opposition party.
The president specified that the Interior portfolio will be headed by Nicolás Martinelli and Pablo Abdala, while the current Minister of Industry and Energy, Omar Paganini, will be the new head of eastern diplomacy.
If Lacalle Pou did not order these exits, he was exposed to Congress being the one to order censorship at least from Heber, as the leader of the Front, Fernando Pereira, warned yesterday. Even with nuances, also in the National and Colorado parties, the largest partners in the government coalition, there were sectors that considered that the scandal is enough to push for more replacements.
The crisis detonated on Wednesday with Bustillo’s resignation after audio of a telephone conversation of his in November 2022 with the then vice chancellor Carolina Ache was leaked to the press. in which the then minister allegedly suggested that he “lose” his cell phone to avoid giving Justice conversations related to the delivery of the Uruguayan passport to Marset.
Sebastian Marset. Photo: Redes sociales
Finally, Ache handed over the chats he exchanged with Bustillo to the Prosecutor’s Office. In addition, Ache provided documentation to prove that presidential advisor Lafluf destroyed a notarial document from the Foreign Ministry. which contained chats he had on the subject with the Undersecretary of the InteriorGuillermo Maciel, and asked her to delete the messages and certify with a notary that they were not on her cell phone.
The head of the Frente Amplio was categorical in his complaint: “No one explains why in Uruguay a passport was given to a heavy drug trafficker and dangerous that he was imprisoned in Dubai for entering with a false Paraguayan passport,” said Fernando Pereira.
The same question is at the center of the analyzes of the problem facing the government.
Institutional crisis
“We are facing a political and also institutional crisis. Political, because it affects at least two ministers, his immediate collaborators, one of the president’s two main advisors. And institutional because one of the most serious accusations has to do with a type of procedural fraud regarding an administrative investigation, in which the Ministers of the Interior and Foreign Affairs agreed on a strategy for the interpellation carried out by the Frente Amplio in Congress,” he evaluated. analyst Daniel Chasquetti.
In August of last year, claimed by the Frente Amplio, Heber and Bustillo had to go to the Senate, where They defended the delivery of the passport to Marset and rejected irregularities. Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of the Republic, Chasquetti remarked that “everyone is waiting for clarifications” from Lacalle Pou, who may even be the subject of a political trial.
“Ache’s evidence in the Prosecutor’s Office compromises the president. His main advisor acted on his behalf, called a meeting, summoned the Undersecretaries of Foreign Affairs and the Interior to destroy evidence and that is very complicated. The president was at the meeting and then left. And according to the statements, the advisor was in constant contact, calling him. He is going to have to explain this,” the analyst remarked. “We should not rule out that hypothesis” from the trial, he insisted.
Senator Guillermo Domenech, from the right-wing Cabildo Abierto, a partner in the government coalition, considered “obvious that if the explanations do not convince” we will have to “study what to do,” but he announced that the force “is willing to take serious measures.”
“Impeachment requires two-thirds of Parliament. It is not easy to obtain that majority, but the country, and not the political system, “He deserves explanations for what happened.”he judged.
Bolivian passport of Sebastián Marset. Photo: Attorney General’s Office of Bolivia
The management of Lacalle Pou already faced several critical situations, but perhaps precisely for that reason the reaction of the government partners was harsher this time. Among these cases are the sale of passports to Russians by an organization headed by former Presidential Security Chief Alejandro Astesiano; the alleged irregularities with advertising contracts of the Ministry of Tourism; the 80-year concession of the port of Montevideo; the direct contracting of a hotel owned by the husband of a pro-government senator to house homeless people during the pandemic.
Before the return of the Marset case, for which an official from the National Directorate of Civil Identification was dismissed last year, the ruling party was left without one of its key men in the Senate: Gustavo Penadés, who He was separated from the bench due to complaints about the payment of sexual favors to minors.
“It would be too much distraction” on the part of Lacalle Pou, stated an editorial in The Daily, who warned: “One thing is the attempt to hide errors or clumsiness, and quite another to conceal complicity or corruption.”
Chasquetti considered that “there is a chance that the governing coalition, which is made up of the National, Colorado, Independiente and Cabildo parties, will break up.” That eventual breakup, in addition to the meaning of the political coup, It would bring problems to the Executive in Congress for the loss of seats that would entail.
Ciudadanos, the internal sector of the Colorados, justified the departure of Lafluf and Maciel from their positions and Minister Pablo Mieres, of the Independent Party, asked to go “down to the bone” with those who “crossed the line of legality.” Chasquetti went beyond this case and warned that the scandal “it will have electoral effectswithout a doubt, and of course the FA will have the possibility of taking advantage.”
The political scientist and head of the consulting firm Factum, Oscar Bottinelli, on the other hand, urged to differentiate between the impact on citizens and the commotion within the political environment. “Many times it happens that big events impact the next day and sometimes there is a succession of events that generate an accumulation, but everything detonates due to something not so serious,” he pointed out and gave as an example the departure from office of the Frente Amplista Raúl Sendic, who had to leave. of the oil company Ancap for having used a corporate card.
In television statements, Botinelli rejected that it could be an “institutional” crisis.
“Institutional crisis is when institutions fail. Here there may be an impact on the way of management. This is based on an interpellation in the Senate, the Prosecutor’s Office takes action. Everything is channeled within the institutions. There is indeed a political crisis and it is a fact that hits the president,” concluded the well-known pollster.
Source: Télam, EFE and Clarín
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