MADRID, 21 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Congress of Peru and member of the right-wing Avanza País, José Williams, has accused this Thursday the Peruvian president, Pedro Castillo, of resorting to the Organization of American States (OAS) to hinder the criminal investigations opened against him.
“As head of the Legislative Branch, I must state that I am deeply concerned that the president (…) is using a mechanism such as the Inter-American Democratic Charter in order to cover up and obstruct the six criminal investigations against him,” he has said. Williams expressed in statements to the press, according to the RPP station.
After the OAS agreed to send a special delegation to Peru to assess the country’s democratic situation at the request of Castillo, the president of Congress stated that the government intends to “misinform the member countries” of the organization by giving them arguments without the “necessary context” to “understand the procedure” of the Peruvian institutions.
However, Williams has assured that although he respects the possible analyzes carried out by the OAS in the country, this will not affect in any way the procedures carried out in Congress and the country’s Attorney General’s Office. He has also called on the organization to speak with the country’s authorities beyond the Executive.
“We are willing to be able to receive them and we think it will be good for them to come, to talk to the Prosecutor’s Office, which, for sure, has a lot to say and a lot to report; to talk to Congress, obviously we have a lot to say; surely he is going to speak with other institutions, such as the press,” he added, according to ‘El Comercio’.
Regarding Castillo’s accusations about the apparent illegal behavior of the Attorney General’s Office filing a constitutional complaint against him, Williams has maintained that “the constitutional order is not being violated” and that the rule of law is being respected.
“Congress has been acting in accordance with its functions provided for in the Constitution, always respecting the rule of law and always in defense of rights and freedoms,” stressed the president of the Parliament of Peru.
The Peruvian Foreign Ministry has expressed its confidence that the sending of the “high-level” delegation by the OAS will help promote dialogue between the Peruvian authorities, thus ending the political crisis facing the country.
“The High Level Group will help promote dialogue between the Peruvian authorities and the political and social forces, which will allow us to overcome the serious political crisis we are going through,” the Peruvian diplomacy said in a message on Twitter.
The head of the Foreign Ministry, César Landa, has indicated that the confrontation with the government has intensified despite the Executive’s attempts to call for agreement, endangering democratic governance.
“The essential task of preventive collective action, regulating articles 17 and 18 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, is to generate the conditions and carry out a national dialogue and agreement to overcome crises and preserve democracy,” Landa detailed, according to has picked up the newspaper ‘La República’.
Likewise, he has pointed out that sending a mission made up of the representatives of the States that make up the OAS is “essential to take a neutral and independent look at the current situation in Peru.”
The special OAS delegation will be sent after the organization’s Permanent Council has scheduled a special session for this Thursday in order to address the Peruvian government’s request to activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
The Peruvian Executive had formally requested the OAS to activate articles 17 and 18 of the Democratic Charter with which the inter-American organization can provide assistance when “the government of a member state considers that its democratic institutional political process or its legitimate exercise of power”.
All this commotion takes place a week after the Peruvian attorney general presented before Congress a constitutional accusation against Castillo accusing him of corruption.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the president of Peru would be the head of a criminal organization active in the Ministry of Transport and Communications in complicity with Silva, as well as with officials of Provías Nacional and Provías Descentralizado, the Presidential Office and businessmen and third parties, to favor the Puente Tarata III consortium and other companies in public bidding processes.
After this accusation, Castillo affirmed that he is suffering political persecution, while denouncing a “new type of coup.”
