Former Peruvian Interior Minister Jorge Montoya, in a file image.
/ Europa Press
The president of Peru Martín Vizcarra has appointed this Thursday the fifth Minister of the Interior since he took office in March 2018. To prevent Congress from striking another blow to the Executive, the president belatedly accepted the resignation of Jorge Montoya, after the On September 1, the official assured that he had been deceived by an officer and that is why, according to him, he gave false information about the police operation that caused 13 deaths by suffocation during the eviction of a nightclub that operated illegally in the pandemic.
On the night of August 22, in the district of Los Olivos, in Lima, a group of police officers from the Green Squad, specialized in common crimes, entered Thomas Restobar, due to the fact that people violated sanitary regulations and the prohibition of social gatherings in full spread of the coronavirus.
The establishment had only one escape route, at the end of a narrow staircase.
At dawn on Sunday 23, the statement from the Ministry of the Interior assured that "those attending the party tried to escape through the only entrance door, running over themselves and being trapped between the door and a staircase."
However, six days later, a television channel broadcast a closed-circuit video of the restobar that showed a policeman in control of the door, when people had not yet left the premises.
Therefore, 72 hours later, the then Minister Montoya reported that the person in charge of the police operation gave him false information about what happened.
"What I did was transmit and give an account of what the head of the operation had told me at that time," Montoya said in a transmission from the Government Palace earlier this month.
“From the results of the investigation carried out by the Office of Institutional Integrity of the Ministry, irregularities have been evidenced in the collection, custody and conservation of the evidence, it would be proven that false information has been provided through an official document, and it has been omitted or hidden information, ”added the official, a retired military officer from the Air Force.
Montoya also acknowledged that the alteration of the evidence hampered the investigation procedures.
A couple of weeks earlier, Congress had questioned the Minister of Education, Martín Benavides, and after the new information about the tragedy, parliamentarians announced that they would question the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Economy, María Antonieta Alva.
Alva answered a list of questions in Parliament on Friday and Monday;
and yesterday 36 congressmen from four benches presented a motion to censor it.
Since the Parliament was installed in March, which replaced the one dissolved in September last year, the confrontation between powers of the State in Peru has not ceased.
The Executive seeks the approval of political reform regulations that allow clean elections in April 2021, while the Legislative one promotes short-term and unconstitutional laws to sympathize with the large majorities economically affected by the economic crisis that the pandemic has generated.
"The president supported the minister to the extent that it was useful to him and the political situation did not complicate him, but Montoya was the next candidate for interpellation and possible censorship," Ricardo Valdés, former interior minister and analyst, told this newspaper.
“The departure of the minister is due to political pressure due to irregularities that were not initially reported in the nightclub operation.
It is a decision driven by the responsibility of the operation and the controversy unleashed by the recent findings ”, adds Stefano Corzo, citizen security researcher at the NGO Instituto de Defensa Legal.
In a three-minute ceremony, this Thursday, César Gentille, a retired general of the National Police, former head of the La Libertad police region, was sworn in as the new Interior Minister.
"He has technical knowledge of police operations and citizen security but a very bad reputation in managing resources," says Valdés about the new cabinet minister Vizcarra.
When Gentille was invited to the retreat, he had an investigation open for more than 50 hires from the same supplier during his tenure as police chief in the La Libertad region.