“It backfired on them.” The comment belongs to the Frente Amplio senator Daniel Caggiani (MPP), and was made this Wednesday in reference to the CEO’s resignation of the Ministry of the Interior, Luis Calabria. The hierarch left after admitting that, on July 1 and being a civilian, he went to undergo an ophthalmological consultation at the Police Hospital. An action similar to the one that, until just hours before, the ruling party aimed at the opposition legislator Charles Carrera.
It was, according to Calabria, a “valuation error”, but that could be used to impact government management. Precisely, the reflection that is made in the Broad Front is that this resignation is a direct effect of the “persecution” to which Carrera has been subjected and that, surely, it will have a concrete impact on the parliamentary investigative commission that the ruling party intends to advance in the Senate.
Senator Enrique Rubio (VA) warned in this regard to The Observer that the commission will more than likely end up becoming a “boomerang” that will have an impact on the traditional parties. In particular, he assured, about the National Party. As he explained, the irregularity for which Calabria had to leave his post was common in several administrations, which will lead the ruling party and the opposition to enter into a “Case archeology over several decades”.
Rubio spoke there of “notorious examples” that, if the FA finally agrees to join the commission, will be presented. Several opposition leaders have brought up the case of the former president in recent days Luis Lacalle Herrera, who underwent knee surgery at the Police Hospital. In this framework, the Broad Front insists: both Calabria and Carrera were covered to care for themselves or their families, through the provisions of the Budget Law voted in 1967, and which includes all personnel dependent on the Ministry of the Interior.
“This will lead to a guerrilla war, very bad for the democratic system and political coexistence,” Ruby warned. In that sense, the Frente Amplio senator confided to El Observador that the actions of the government and a good part of the pro-government caucus against Carrera ended up breaking the partisan dialogue in Parliament. The problem is, fundamentally, with Blacksmithing.
Rubio, who personally said that an investigator who is proposed for causes that are being studied by the Justice will no longer vote, insisted that this commission will constitute undue pressure on the prosecutors and judges who are in charge of the five cases that analyze the irregularities that point to Carrera.
In his opinion, the political system should address the underlying problem, which the Broad Front governments were unable to solve due to the “corporate” resistance of doctors and police: the integration of the Police Hospital in the National Integrated Health System (SNIS).
You have to investigate everything
“Nothing changed. What has to appear, let it appear” made it clear to The Observer the nationalist senator Jorge Gandini, on the effects that an investigator on this subject could have for the interests of the government.
The legislator argued that the case of Calabria is not comparable to that of Charles Carrera, accused, among other aspects, of using his position as director general of the Ministry of the Interior to make attend, between 2010 and 2012, to what at that time was his wife. In addition, he noticed the attitude that both took when their cases were known. Calabria, he maintained, left Carrera “the very high rod of dignity” by deciding to resign from office.
Thus, the nationalist senator said he was willing to investigate everything. Even up to what may have happened the day before the researcher begins to work. The fundamental thing, he insisted, is to investigate what happened at the end of 2012 in La Paloma when a bullet, presumably from the police, left Víctor Hernández in a wheelchair.
This is a civilian who, as reported last week by current Minister Luis Alberto Heber, spent three and a half years irregularly interned in the Police Hospital at the request of Carrera, who passed him off as a non-commissioned officer. There he received medical attention and even underwent surgery on both eyes. He also received, during that period, food tickets for $20,000 a month, as reported by the Santo y Seña program.
The investigation that the ruling party intends goes through whether Carrera incurred in all that action to cover up what happened in the Roche police unit.
Background
The investigative commission on this case will be the third of its kind that sees the light in the current period of government, and number 43 since the return to democracy. The two researchers who met in the current legislature. The Chamber of Deputies has just been involved in a long discussion about the alleged “irregular licenses” of several Secondary school union leaders. Months before its conclusion, the coalition had already defined the passage of the case to Justice.
A conclusion that the commission formed to investigate alleged irregularities during the last three managements in the Ministry of Tourism, originated after the departure of Germán Cardoso from that portfolio, also had. The Prosecutor’s Office continues to investigate the accusations against the former chief, while he decided to file those that Cardoso had made against his predecessors.
Until now, the investigative commissions that have had a concrete political or judicial effect have been very few. The current secretary of the Presidency, the nationalist Álvaro Delgado, presented in July 2015 the request to investigate the “economic and financial situation of Ancap” during the administration of the leftist governments, with losses estimated by the opposition at almost US$1,000. millions.
The work of the commission ended in February 2016 and in April of that year the four parties of the then opposition filed a criminal complaint, whose only convict turned out to be Raúl Sendic, in whom the main focus of the questions was always. The crimes of embezzlement were classified against him, in relation to the expenses made with the entity’s corporate card while he was its president, and for abuse of functions linked to his role in Ancap’s debt negotiations with Venezuela. Sendic also ended up resigning from his position as Vice President of the Republic.
Another defendant was one of the owners of Siemm, an emergency company in Bella Unión that sold services to ASSE and whose owners were at the same time directors of the public hospital in that town. Marcos García was classified as a crime of conjunction of personal and public interest.
