On March 1, a new period of the current legislature began, but Parliament is in a kind of de facto recess. The commissions are paralyzed and some chamber sessions were suspended. The reason: the referendum campaign that aims to repeal 135 articles of the Urgent Consideration Law (LUC).
Despite the fact that the phenomenon is due to a political agreement, this Wednesday the Broad Front bench in the Senate plans to meet and “take action” regarding possible parliamentary actions on the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, and the “sequence of events” that has been leading in the last hours and that, in the opinion of the opposition, offers a “little guarantee” position before the next popular consultation.
So he said to The Observer Senator Enrique Rubio (Artiguista Side). “Heber is not behaving like a minister who guarantees an electoral event, security and public liberties,” The legislator pointed out, recalling the role that, by law, falls to the Ministry of the Interior in each electoral act.
What the Broad Front questions is the central role that Heber has been playing in defense of the LUC and a series of statements “tremendous” and inopportune” about the effects of a possible repeal. For example, the political force points out when the minister warns that if the Yes vote prevails, it will be necessary to “open the prisons” and release prisoners as the crimes and penalties for which they were imprisoned became invalid.
Rubio recalled that Heber is no longer a parliamentarian and his participation in the campaign breaks with Uruguayan tradition. “It makes more sense for the President of the Republic to defend his positions than for the minister to campaign like this,” Held.
In the Broad Front, Heber’s attitude and his messages to the Police are questioned in particular at such a “particular moment” as this process towards the referendum. In this regard, Rubio warned about the “handle” that understands that from the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior it is given to the police, with signs that “his fate will practically be at stake depending on what happens with the LUC”.
The senator argued that, in some officials with “more primary formation”, those messages can have unintended consequences. “You have to be careful, the police are not a political faction,” express.
In this regard, Rubio referred to a particular situation: Heber’s decision to attend Durazno this Monday, to support the two police officers charged with the death of Santiago Cor, a 20-year-old who died in August 2020 when he crashed into a tree with his motorcycle, while he was walking away from the Police. The Prosecutor’s Office asked to investigate the two agents for homicide and abuse of duties, which was rejected by the minister.
For Heber, the judicial decision constitutes a “bad signal” for the Police and defended the accused. He assured that they complied with the Law of Police Procedure and gave the young man a stop, who chose to escape. His presence in front of the court, he explained, responded to the intention of “give support” to the police officers who “obeyed orders from the minister” to “not be spectators in the face of crime.” In July of last year Heber had questioned the decision of the Prosecutor’s Office to charge the police officers.
“He appears to pressure the Justice”, For his part, Senator Charles Carrera (MPP) pointed out, questioning the “undue interference” of the Executive Power over the Judiciary. One more demonstration, he said she, that the government “overwhelms the guarantees” of citizenship.
For Carrera, this responds directly to the effects of the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC), which “flexible” the framework of police action. The senator considered that Heber should be much more cautious in judging him, and not be a simple “fan” who adopts a position without analyzing the substantive aspects. “It is clear that we have to demand political responsibility,” the legislator told The Observer.
In this regard, the Association of Magistrates of Uruguay publicly questioned Heber’s attitude and considered that his presence in front of the court constitutes an “attempt to put undue pressure” on Justice.
The 88 year old woman
Another of the points that the FA questions is the police action around several episodes related to the campaign towards the referendum to repeal the LUC on March 27. In particular, what happened with an 88-year-old woman, who last Sunday he decided to demonstrate with a poster in favor of Yes standing in the middle of the flowerbed that divides Agraciada Avenue at the height of Plaza San Martín, while the caravan of No.
At least six police officers approached her and “withdrew” her, in an act that the opposition interpreted as a “violation” of the woman’s right to demonstrate. “We repudiate the cowardice of those who attack an elderly lady in a gang,” Carrera maintained, pointing out the “crazy police action. The senator assured that the woman was insulted and “was kicked” by a “crowd” of No demonstrators, under the gaze of the police.
The accusation was publicly refuted by the director of Coexistence and Citizen Security of the ministry, Santiago González. “The lady threw herself on a car and the police asked her, for her integrity, to go up the sidewalk. She continued to protest calmly.” González pointed against the opposition: “You can’t lie all the time, not everything is worth it to win a vote.”
Faced with that, in the Broad Front they mark what happened last weekend in Isla Patrulla (Treinta y Tres), when a group of people attacked some women who militated for the Sí and tore up the ballot papers they were distributing, in the face of the “passivity” of the police present at the scene.
For the FA Heber should also answer for the accumulation of cases of police abuse denounced in recent weeks, also attributed by the opposition to the “path of deprofessionalization of the police” undertaken by the LUC. In the opinion of the Frente Amplio senators, the message that the authorities gave to the officials on March 1, 2020, with harangues of the type “go forward” or “there is an order not to loosen up”, is also at play there, typical of the late minister Jorge Larrañaga. .
According to Carrera, this was the basis that generated the situations denounced as police abuse.
In this sense, the Broad Front appealed to the recent report released by the National Institution for Human Rights and the Ombudsman’s Office (Inddhh), which requested an investigation after having verified more than 100 cases of irregularities committed by police actions so far in this government. There, the report reported 62 cases of abuse, 21 injuries and eleven illegal raids.
The data is based on the complaints made by several public defenders who, according to the opposition, were never summoned by the Ministry of the Interior to investigate what happened.
