During the caravan of the Campaign for the No to the repeal of the 135 articles of the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC) held this Sunday, A lady stood in a flowerbed on Agraciada Avenue, on the corner of Manuel Antonio Artigas, and began to wave a flag of Yes to the repeal. This demonstration by the lady led at least four police officers to approach the scene, but the reasons for this procedure are not clear. While from the Ministry of the Interior they assure that it was to take care of the “integrity” of the lady, from the opposition and the person involved herself they assure that she was “filed” by the police.
on social networks several photos were shared of three police officers talking to the lady, who was standing on the street while the cars of the caravan went by.
This situation sparked a discussion on Twitter between the director of Coexistence and Citizen Security of the Ministry of the Interior, Santiago González, and the senator from the Front, Charles Carrera, who was joined by the lady herself, called Idiana Garandan, 88, and her version on Facebook.
All three have different versions. although Garandan’s coincides in criticizing a bad action by the police like Carrera. However, neither of the two politicians retracted and both maintained their version of eventsconsulted by The Observer.
Network discussion
The first to criticize the action was Charles Carrera, who in a tweet shared the fact in three different photosand described the action as an “excess” of the policesince the woman “He was making use of his right to demonstrate peacefully”. “What danger can an 82-year-old #VotoSi protester represent?” she wondered.
Yesterday by default! Today for action! What danger can an 82-year-old protester represent for the #VoteYes?
Instead of celebrating a democratic demonstration, we should lament an excess. He was making use of his right to demonstrate peacefully(+) pic.twitter.com/Phbk0JHrHQ– Charles Carrera Leal (@ChCarreraLeal) March 6, 2022
The legislator blamed the Ministry of the Interior because “it should worry about giving guarantees to the electoral act of the referendum, instead of taking sides in an open way and coming out with a series of lies” about the consequences of repealing the articles, and questioned what signals the minister, Luis Alberto Heber, was giving to the police, because “He is not acting with due sanity.”
This Twitter thread was answered by González, who said that the woman was 88 years old, not 82, and that she “He threw himself on a car and the Police asked him, for his integrity, to go up to a sidewalk and he continued to demonstrate calmly”. He asked Carrera “seriousness”, and maintained that “You can’t lie all the time.” “Not everything is worth to win a vote”, wrote.
But Senator, please, a little seriousness.
The lady, 88 not 82, threw herself on a car and the Police asked her, for her integrity, to go up to a sidewalk and continued to protest calmly.
You can’t lie all the time. Not everything goes to win a vote. https://t.co/7siiKv9Fzp
– Santiago González (@santiagon1974) March 7, 2022
Then the lady appeared: Idiana Garandan posted on Facebook that she was denounced by some No protesters for “hitting cars with a cane”, so they arrested her pulling her out of the place, a cop on each arm. Then, “someone came and told them that he was filming and recording”the woman continued, and another witness appeared to tell the uniformed men that she only had her cane hanging on her right wrist, with both hands clutching the bannerso that there was no way he was hitting cars.
However, he assured that was “filed” by the authorities. “The policemen smiled and left,” he added, and ended by saying that he is 88 years old and has been active “since he was very young, before he was 20 years old.”
They both keep their word
Gonzalez stated to The Observer than the facts they are as he recounted them in the tweet. He denied that someone had denounced the lady because “the police were on the march”, and saw how “she pounced on cars”, for what they asked “get on a safe sidewalk”and then he was able to continue demonstrating, according to the director of the Ministry of the Interior.
However, Carrera also kept his word. He assured that In the photographs he shared, you can see how two policemen “are collecting the data”, what he called an “excess”, and an “inadequate” procedure.
The former director general of the Secretariat of the Ministry of the Interior explained that the case It came to him through complaints and the word of colleaguesand compared the situation with a case of Treinta y Tres that occurred on March 5 in the Rutas de América Time Trial, in which some protesters of the No They attacked and tore up some Yes ballots from a group of women protesters, without the police present there interveningwhich in his opinion is an “omission” of the authorities.
“The one who is carrying out wrong actions is the Minister of the Interior, who has to be busy ensuring that the electoral act is peaceful,” criticized Carrera, who once again said that the minister is “dislocated” and expressed that “is wrong” to say that the Yes campaign is “against the police”. “We are in favor of a police with all the equipment and decent wagesand we believe that the LUC leads to a deprofessionalization of the police“, remarked the opposition senator.
