The Defense Minister insisted that his sector is not responsible for the operational deployment carried out by the Armed Forces, but is in charge of its political measures and responses.
the minister Jorge Chavez Cresthead of the Defense sector in the Government of Dina Boluarte and successor of Alberto Otárola in office, specified the functions that, as the authority of said portfolio, Must perform. This as a result of the statements issued by the current prime minister, before the Prosecutor’s Office in the framework of the investigations into the genocide case, which were released last Thursday. in them, Otárola blamed the Joint Command of the Armed Forces on the balance of deaths and the actions committed by the army in the province during the protests against the management of Boluarte Zegarra.
In an interview for Radio Nacional, Chávez Cresta insisted on the version given to the Public Ministry by his predecessor and today head of the PCM. “The Minister of Defense is the political representative of the Armed Forces and does not intervene in the operational part, that the Joint Command and its various components do so through directives and through operations plans: the operational commands and the units that comprise it. I say this because the Minister of Defense does not act in the development of the plans of operations,” he asserted.
According to the official, what the Minister of Defense receives is “directives from the Joint Command of the Armed Forces in the situation of the legal framework.”
Chávez Cresta even specified that many of these actions carried out by the CC. FF. AA. depend to some extent on the same National Police of Peru. “When the control of the internal order in the declaration of the state of emergency is in charge of the Police, the Armed Forces receive the plan of operations from the Police and they, by virtue of that plan of operations, act in support of the Police,” he explained.
However, he warned that, in situations such as Puno, the FF. AA. They can develop current “operations plans” as they have been doing in that region, but they are “two totally different situations.”
In this sense, he responded to the criticism regarding the lack of a direct political person in charge of the genocide investigations that have been initiated against Boluarte and Otárola.
“Sometimes we confuse because I have heard some statements that expect the Minister of Defense to take a flag and be ahead of the operations or that he can carry out the leadership of the military actions, that is not the case”he added.
