Santi Peña surrounded by those who participated in the meeting on Sunday, August 20. At the extremes they appear, on the left the comptroller Camilo Benítez and on the right the attorney general Emiliano Rolón.
Write: Luis Allen.
Already installed in the Government, Chartism made the first key move with the call to specialized agencies in the fight against corruption such as the Comptroller’s Office and the Public Ministry, in order to promote the investigation of the management of Marito Abdo. Thus, the objective of Horacio Cartes is fulfilled, who seeks to involve the Prosecutor’s Office in his counteroffensive that seeks to prevent the investigations against him from advancing.
In a meeting that was not scheduled, President Santiago Peña convened on Sunday, August 20 at the unusual time of 3:00 p.m. Justice in matters of corruption, in order to discuss a line of action to follow in the fight against this scourge.
The position of the Head of State is to be commended, shortly after taking office, showing his commitment to sweep away corrupt officials from the Government and to involve in this mission the other state bodies that are prepared by law for this, such as the Comptroller’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office The fight against contraband, drug traffickers and arms trafficking was also included on the agenda.
Santi Peña was thus able to explain to public opinion that his intention to get rid of the Anti-Corruption Secretariat would not have the purpose of not giving importance to the issue, but, on the contrary, it is a skilful political move by Chartism to mainly convince the Prosecutor’s Office that much of the work corresponds to prosecutors.
Only that the underlying intention in this commendable purpose has as its main objective the investigation of the finished management of Marito Abdo, giving more space and follow-up to the thirst for revenge of the “strong man” Horacio Cartes.
Hence, the success or failure of the summit of powers and of the Chartist intention will inevitably depend on whether or not the current all-encompassing political power of HC can get the attorney general to carry out an “anti-Marito” move first, rejecting a first “anti HC” action.
the real urgency
There is another even more urgent purpose: it is that HC also wants to anticipate any action that the Prosecutor’s Office takes against it, putting Emiliano Rolón between a rock and a hard place to choose whether or not to continue as a participant in the decision-making of the “anti-corruption summit”, since the attorney general has had a clear message from the head of the Comptroller’s Office, advising that he will be the person in charge of sending him the numbers of the abdist management.
In case of subjecting to the “superior order” of Cartes, the prosecutor must initiate proceedings against the past administration once he receives data from the comptroller, but he can also disregard the “suggestion” of HC to concentrate on the pending processes against the Employer, which will inevitably cause the attorney general to break with the summit promoted by Chartism.
The rushed summons of Santi Peña has thus had the character of a virtual “squeeze” on Attorney General Rolón, with the addition of a kind of acquiescence from the comptroller Camilo Benítez, who expressed at the end of the meeting that he practically agreed with the elimination of the Anti-Corruption Secretariat of the Executive, as was the intention already announced by Santi Peña, to supposedly allow the entire initiative to fight corruption to be concentrated in the Comptroller’s Office and then send the data to the General Prosecutor’s Office for subsequent prosecution in the courts under the inspection of the Court, whose president César Diesel was a participant in the “summit”.
In principle, Rolón has already stated on several occasions that he is opposed to receiving “indications” from the Executive, as well as directives from political or factual powers, but now the litmus test came for him with the attendance at the “summit”, which has not had another intention than to show you the road map that HC could indicate.
Will there be a new scar?
A pragmatic way out for Rolón could be to carry out the investigations simultaneously against both Marito and Horacio, but the big problem is that an in-depth investigation against both will inevitably lead to a governance problem for the ANR and its benches in Congress. Just as it already happened in the previous government, when Abdism had to agree to mutual impunity with Chartism to avoid the two political trials against Marito in the case of the Itaipu secret act, in July 2019, as well as for the social upheaval of March 2019. 2021 caused by mistakes in health care during the pandemic, despite the country’s large debt to finance the effects of the health crisis.
Now the Cartista government of Santi Peña boasts of promoting anti-corruption plans, even ridiculing the supposed uselessness of Mario Abdo’s Anti-Corruption Secretariat, which nevertheless had sounded the alarm about the Iranian-Venezuelan plane, linked to the terrorists of the Lebanese Hezbollah, who had come to carry HC Tabesa cigarettes in May 2022, for their subsequent distribution in the north of the continent from the Caribbean tax haven of Aruba.
What must be made explicit is that any initiative from either the Anti-Corruption Secretariat or the Comptroller’s Office, in the past abdist government, had the assured fate of being boxed in by Sandra Quiñónez’s prosecutors, in the event that they affected the interests of Patrón HC or of his relatives of the Chartist court circle, given the manifest subjection to the Chartist orders in the Public Ministry during the previous period 2018-2023.
It is true that Chartism can have its own majority in Parliament with the help of liberal votes or other “satellite” opponents, so the dispute between Colorados could already be defined in the judicial field and especially on the side of an independent action of the Attorney General Rolón, who will be in charge of deciding whether or not the Cartista accusations against Marito are consistent, in the sense that he would have perpetrated several alleged illegal blows against public coffers in his five years in office.
The return of an operation Cicatriz like the one carried out in the middle of the pandemic and for electoral purposes before the 2021 municipal elections, would not be feasible this time because in the political sphere the conditions are not given for now, but the search for impunity is. mutual between HC and Marito could be transferred to the level of Justice, to be by the call on Sunday August 20 of the three powers plus the extra-power agencies.
In this way, it can be said that the Sunday summit is part of the evident intention of Chartism to “sanction” Marito at any cost, and even more so that the process against the same HC in the Prosecutor’s Office remains in the background or He could even be boxed in again, always awaiting an extradition request that could come from the North of the continent.