2023-11-06 12:40:27
The Uruguayan opposition Frente Amplio (FA) said it expected “greater forcefulness” from President Luis Lacalle Pou in the face of the scandal caused by the concealment of information from Justice in the case of the passport given to drug trafficker Sebastián Marset, which the president declared settled with the replacement of four senior officials.
After a session of the expanded executive secretariat of the left-wing coalition – which includes representatives of the two parliamentary groups -, the president of the FA, Fernando Pereirawarned Sunday night that “drug trafficking cannot be allowed to get into politics” and added that Lacalle Pou “is convinced that with this he turned the page, and the page is just beginning.”
The elected president of the Broad Front of Uruguay, Fernando Pereira. Photo: EFE
According to the Montevideo newspaper El País, this Monday, the leaders of the government coalition met over the weekend with the president who detailed the measures taken to resolve “the main political crisis of the administration”: the dismissal of four officials. They are the now former chancellor Francisco Bustillo; the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber; from Undersecretary Guillermo Maciel; and also the presidential communication advisor Roberto Lafluf.
The leaders of the ruling coalition had planned to meet this Monday and analyze the president’s statements, which – in principle – they considered correct. The opposition, on the other hand, does not.
In his statements on Sunday night, Fernando Pereira stated that the president cannot “give the order to an advisor of intervene in two ministries“.
He said the latter in reference to what emerges from the statement made last Wednesday by former Vice Chancellor Carolina Ache in the Prosecutor’s Office, in which she said that advisor Roberto Lafluf had asked to delete a key chat in the Marset case, and that even had falsified a file in the Chancellery that that chat contained, an assertion that Lacalle Pou denied on Saturday when announcing the resignations.
What is the Marset case?
In 2021, Marset, 32, was captured in Dubai following entering the United Arab Emirates with a false Paraguayan passport. He allegedly contacted Uruguayan government officials in Montevideo and received a new passport from his country, so he was immediately released.
Marset was born in Uruguay and is the leader of the First Uruguayan Cartel (PCU) organization, a drug organization with branches in the region.
Fake Bolivian passport of Sebastián Marset. Photo: Attorney General’s Office of Bolivia
This drug trafficker has a ten-year history linked to drug trafficking and has been a fugitive since the end of 2021.
The delivery of the passport to the drug trafficker ended in an investigation in the Uruguayan courts by prosecutor Alejandro Machado. Within the framework of this investigation, Foreign Minister Bustillo resigned last week.
He resigned from the position following audios were released in which he appears to ask the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carolina Ache, not to hand over his phone to investigators.
The reaction of the opposition
“Uruguayans were waiting for an explanation as to why a passport was given to a drug trafficker. They still don’t know what happened“said Pereira, who did not hesitate to define that “there is a democratic crisis, there is a political crisis and there is a government crisis” following the four resignations of the Lacalle Pou administration, El País reported.
The blow that it meant for the Government of Uruguay the concealment of information from the Justice in the case of the passport given to the drug trafficker Marset put the official alliance in an unprecedented internal crisis.
Luis Lacalle Pou. Photo: AP
Last Friday, the senators of the Frente Amplio reiterated a request for the dismissal of the officials involved already presented previously and warned that, if it did not materialize, they would present a motion of censure once morest the now former Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber.
On Saturday, when he returned to the country from the United States, where he made a state visit, Lacalle anticipated the opposition’s claims and announced that he had accepted the resignation of both Heber and Guillermo Maciel and Lafluf.
Pereira said at a press conference that although the resignations were not what they had asked for but rather “the dismissal”, they valued these steps to the side as “positive, because they remove from the Government people who clearly acted outside of adequate public action.” , reported the media outlet La Diaria.
“The political and government crisis that currently exists” in Uruguay is so great that “60% of the positions of ministers and undersecretaries has ceased due to different scandals,” said the president of the FA.
Although “the ministers are the fuses of a Government”, when “there are so many there is a short circuit that must be able to be stopped,” warned the Broad Front leader.
For Pereira, “it is clear that neither Uruguayan society nor the FA were satisfied with the answers given by the president,” because “greater forcefulness was expected in terms of political responsibilities, in terms of dismissals” and “modestly assuming errors.” that the Presidency itself committed”.
Lacalle Pou and his now former Foreign Minister, Francisco Bustillo. Photo: Sergio Lima / AFP
“The president cannot give the order to intervene in two ministries to an advisor, and if he intervenes, Uruguayan society cannot see it naturally,” he stated. Thus, Pereira expressed himself “concerned” because “it is forcefully stated that the passport, even if it was to a drug trafficker, had to be given to him,” a point regarding which even Cabildo Abierto – a member of the Government coalition – keep differences.
Governments, Pereira pointed out, “have the discretion to give or not give a passport; current legislation allows giving a passport for a single trip that must be to Uruguay.”
The now former undersecretary Maciel “had such clear information that we were facing a dangerous and heavy drug trafficker” and this leads one to wonder, according to the leader, “Why didn’t you call Interpol?” And why did you give the information to Carolina Ache?”
With information from Télam and El País, from Montevideo
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