On Thursday, the Peruvian Congress denied President Pedro Castillo permission to travel to Bogotá, where he planned to attend on August 7 the acts of transmission of command of the elected Colombian president, Gustavo Petro.
In total, 67 legislators voted against granting Castillo permission, 42 voted in favor and there were 5 abstentions, with which Parliament denied the permission that Peruvian presidents must obtain from the chamber for any trip abroad.
When speaking in plenary, the deputies used different arguments to deny the permit. Some affirmed that there was a risk of escape, since the Prosecutor’s Office is investigating Castillo for several cases of possible corruption, while others alleged that there is “an unprecedented presidential crisis.”
“Unprecedented Presidential Crisis”
“We are in an unprecedented presidential crisis and I think that at this moment the president should send (to Colombia) his vice president or the foreign minister, but I think that the president must be here, show his face and declare and explain the acts in which he is involved. », said the former president of Congress María del Carmen Alva, of the right-wing Popular Action party.
For his part, parliamentarian Juan Carlos Martin Lizarzaburu, of the Fujimori Popular Force, stated that Castillo “will want to escape” if he goes to Colombia, for which he asked that “he send the foreign minister and he stays assuming responsibility.”
His bench partner Héctor Ventura expressed himself in the same vein, stating that “there is an obvious danger of flight.”
For her part, Katy Ugarte, from the Peru Libre party – with which Castillo became president – affirmed that the Peruvian head of state “has been collaborating in the investigations that the Prosecutor’s Office has opened against him” and stressed that “he has never I would flee the country.”
“I ask my colleagues not to get carried away by hatred or irrational theories,” he claimed without success.
Pedro Castillo assures that he is not part “of any criminal network”
Precisely Castillo went to the Prosecutor’s Office today, where he stated that he is not part of “any criminal network,” as he later declared to the press.
According to the complaint opened in the Prosecutor’s Office, Castillo is suspected of having granted promotions to two officers from the Army, three from the Air Force and two from the National Police in an irregular manner and with the participation of former Defense Minister Walter Ayala and his former presidential secretary Bruno Pacheco, also implicated in other cases against the president.
The President of Peru declares before the Prosecutor’s Office that he is not part of any criminal network
Pedro Castillo assured that he will prove his innocence, after the interrogation for one of the cases of alleged corruption opened against him.#DWNews /cvml pic.twitter.com/3s9jMecMqd
— DW Spanish (@dw_espanol) August 4, 2022
Pacheco surrendered to justice in July, after several months on the run, and has offered himself as a collaborator with the Prosecutor’s Office in the open investigations against Castillo, which include the crime of criminal organization, among others.
The head of state, who served one year in the Executive on July 28, is also being investigated for alleged irregularities in the adjudication of the construction of the Tarata bridge and in the purchase of biodiesel.
Also in the alleged plagiarism of his master’s thesis, in military promotions and in the alleged obstruction of the search and capture of former Minister Juan Silva and his nephew Fray Vásquez, implicated in these cases.