The former candidate for mayor of Paysandú Mario Bandera resigned from his positions as departmental conventional and national conventional of the National Party after being convicted of domestic violence and unauthorized possession of firearms.
“Today we have received the resignation of Mario Bandera to his condition of departmental and national conventional of the party”, indicated the president of the departmental party of the National Party, Gerardo Muria, to Underlined (channel 10).
The departmental raised the resignation to the party’s directory so that the internal mechanisms are activated there. “He was already raised a few minutes ago to the party’s directory. We have been in permanent session with the board of directors analyzing the issue. This department emphatically rejects any type of gender violence and domestic violence, which is an issue that worries us a lot,” Muria said.
The former candidate for mayor of Paysandú was convicted of crimes of aggravated domestic violence and illegal possession of weapons after his ex-partner filed a complaint for gender violence.
The prosecution reached an agreement with Bandera’s defense. The abbreviated trial hearing with which the judicial process ended implied that Bandera accepted that he committed those crimes and was sentenced to nine months in prison with probation. That implies that he will not go to effective prison but, in exchange, he must meet certain requirements. The agreement was endorsed by Paysandú judge Juan Ruggiero.
Bandera agreed to leave home and establish a domicile in Quebracho, where he has a field, and where he was also mayor for two consecutive terms, from 2010 to 2020.
On the other hand, the prosecution requested that an electronic anklet be placed on him to control that he does not approach his partner. She must also comply with the obligation to carry out psychological treatment. During the time that she is serving her sentence, she must appear weekly at a Quebracho police station.
The complaint was filed last Wednesday by her partner, who said that Bandera assaulted her and that he walked by with a gun in front of her and their three-year-old son.
According to the victim, when she returned home from work with her son, the boy told his father that she had given the Paysandú flag to the winning cyclist of the Vuelta Ciclista section, to which Bandera reacted with insults. Faced with this aggression, she told him that she wanted to end the bond. Then, he took a knife from the kitchen with which he cut down a plant in the living room, ripped up the carpet on the stairs and cut the curtains on the windows. He then went to the garage where he had the illegal weapons. “He took a revolver and banged on the drum, like he was spinning it,” she testified. From there she began to yell at him: “You don’t exist anymore.”
Immediately, he entered the house with the weapon at his waist and went to the child’s room, where the woman was putting away clothes to go. Bandera told her that he was not going to take her minor and that everything that happened from then on would be her fault. She left, and she asked a friend to take her to file the complaint.
