The Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) ordered this Thursday to intervene in the Villa Española sports club, in order to displace its authorities by calling new elections in the short term, while purging the social register. The fact generated the rejection of different political, union, social and sports organizations.
This Friday, June 24, Lacalle was consulted by the press about the decision to intervene in the club and replied that the government “does not intervene in an institution of this type because it wants to.”
“There is a statute that must be fulfilled and there are partners who demand this intervention,” Lacalle explained to the press.
The president referred to the answers that Minister da Silveira gave in this regard through his social networks, and described them as “fairly clear.”
shameful operetta
Indeed, da Silveira described the reactions against Villa Española’s intervention as “a shameful operetta that some are staging.”
The Secretary of State said that Villa Española, like many sports clubs, is a civil association. “The MEC is in charge of giving them legal personality. The associations must request it and present the statute with which they are going to work”.
He reported that the MEC approves it and is in charge of ensuring compliance. “When some members of a civil association understand that their authorities are not complying with the approved statutes, they can file a complaint with the MEC. Then the MEC investigates and gives defense opportunities. The MEC does not act if there is no complaint”.
Da Silveira said that “some time ago, a group of members of Villa Española filed a complaint. Given this, the MEC is obliged to act. Internal conflicts, intentions, and political orientations are not evaluated. It only verifies whether or not the statute is being complied with.”
He added that in the case of Villa Española “numerous apartments” were denounced, and the MEC found what indeed appeared to be irregularities: “elections that were not held, decisions of assemblies that were not respected, absence of a functioning Fiscal Commission.”
The hierarch cited article 5 of the Villa Española statute that obliges the institution to maintain an “absolute disregard in political or religious matters.”
“The complainants provided evidence that this was not being done. If that article was not in the statute, the discussion would not exist. The MEC does what it always does in these cases: it received a complaint, analyzed its grounds, gave a hearing, analyzed the institution’s response, understood that it was not satisfactory. So he decided to intervene, ”explained the Secretary of State.
Possibility of appeal
He added that due process guarantees “make the decision not yet final”, because the institution can appeal and can assume commitments that prevent the intervention from taking place. All this is normal and frequent”.
He remarked that “before a complaint filed by some partners, the MEC initiated a regular procedure and concluded that there were indeed irregularities. None of this has to do with politics. The MEC would have acted in the same way, whatever the orientation of the authorities.
Da Silveira questioned that presenting the case as a fact of “political persecution is indefensible. Only ignorance or bad faith can explain some reactions.”
the luc
Later, da Silveira spoke with the media and said that article 5 of the club’s statute says that the institution must totally refrain from any political or religious pronouncement and that activities of this nature should not be allowed on the club’s premises.
“I don’t know why the issue of the disappeared is being given so much prominence, here the point that generated the alarms and the complaints was that on the field, that is, in the club’s facilities, players who had a team with the shield of the club, they signed against the LUC, they were photographed, it was uploaded to social networks and the authorities did nothing at that time”, he detailed.
He added that this is a departure from what the club’s statutes say, but if that statute did not establish that, then the MEC would have nothing to say. He added that there are “Lists of political parties that have been constituted in civil associations and of course they talk about politics and say that what they think is good, what happens is that their statute does not say that they cannot talk about politics.”
He assured that what the MEC does is ensure full compliance with the rules, because this country takes the rules seriously, because the rules protect the weak and when there are no rules that are respected, the Law of the strongest remains. But in this case it has nothing to do with politics, nor with what are the norms that were defended”.
