On May 13, the Congress released a statement on behalf of the Board of Speakersreporting that they could not allow the journalists to enter the chamber because they were waiting for a technical report from the National Institute of Civil Defense (INDECI).
The same version was reinforced by the president of Congress, Mary Alva (People’s Action). “There is a follow-up plan to propose a safe return and we request a report from INDECI for it,” he wrote in Twitter.
María Alva, however, was never clear in specifying the exact date on which they requested the report from INDECI.
The Republic agreed to an internal memorandum of Congress, where they just request to manage the intervention of INDECI. The document is dated May 12, that is, just one day before the announcement of the Board of Spokespersons and the pronouncement of Mary Alva.
The memorandum is signed by the senior official Hugo Rovira and he asks the head of the Office of Prevention and Security, Carlos Paz, to take the necessary steps before INDECI to evaluate the galleries of the Chamber of Congress.
This is the document:
In the opinion of Zuliana Lainezpresident of the National Association of Journalists of Peru (PNA), the late submission of the document for negotiations with INDECI shows that there is no real political will on the part of the presidency of Congress to allow face-to-face access to the press.
For this reason, he considered that the issue should be evaluated by the entourage of the Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which has scheduled a meeting with María Alva for this Thursday, May 19.
“There is no real will to attend to the request for access from the press. First it was the pandemic and now the issue of INDECI comes up as a new excuse. Congress doesn’t even allow access to Pasos Perdidos. That is unacceptable,” he said. Zuliana Lainez.
