(By Martín Cocco, special from Montevideo) With the wounds and legal cases still open due to the crisis unleashed by the corruption case of the former head of presidential custody, the conservative government of Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou is facing a new public scandal that could generate a strong impact on the ruling party, after one of its main articulators and negotiators in Congress lost his privileges and must face the accusation of eight victims -among them a 13-year-old boy- about sexual exploitation of minors. .
According to the dates detailed by the victims, all the crimes were committed during the stage of legislator (deputy or senator) of Penadés.
For Eduardo Botinelli, director of the public opinion consultancy Factum, it is very difficult to foresee how far the impact of the Penadés case can go.
As he told Télam, Uruguay is facing a historic event for two reasons: it is the first time that the Senate has approved the impeachment of one of its members and because the event itself is an unprecedented issue, since the country has not had political level this type of case, “which in addition to being extremely serious, is highly reprehensible and socially condemnable”.
Botinelli pointed out that the personal image of Penadés has fallen sharply in public opinion. “What remains to be known over time is how and how much it impacts its sector (Lista 71 or Herrerismo) and how much it impacts the National Party, even how much it can impact the image of Parliament and even the entire political spectrum. added the sociologist.
According to Botinelli, there were cases in the world with repercussions on people or parties, and others without significant impact. For example, there were cases of people with serious accusations, and even proven ones, who later continued their political activity without major electoral repercussions.
Uruguay, Botinelli said, lacks this type of precedent, “there have been others that are not comparable” and that have also had different effects depending on the case and depending on how their party acted at each moment.
A militant since 1982 of the sector of the National Party that led the father of the current president (Luis Lacalle Herrera) to the Presidency in 1990, Penadés has rejected all the accusations from the beginning and confirmed this in his statement before the Prosecutor’s Office.
“I do not regret anything, because I have not committed any crime,” he said last month when leaving the Office of the Prosecutor for Sexual Offenses.
The scandal grew as the local press published the appearance of new victims since the first public case, that of a trans militant of the National Party, who two months ago revealed that as a minor she had been abused by the senator.
For her part, political scientist Tamara Samudio highlighted two important aspects of the damage caused by the Penadés case to the ruling party.
At the parliamentary level, Penadés was a figure with more than three decades in legislative work. “He was a man of dialogue, articulation and negotiation for the National Party and, in particular, in recent years, in the government coalition,” Samudio told Télam.
Penadés articulated in Congress the great projects of the government; Urgent Consideration Law, Social Security Reform, Account Renditions, and the Budget. For the National Party, he is “a loss of a highly relevant figure” with an important negotiating and articulating capacity, referenced by the government coalition and by members of the opposition.
On the other hand, within the governing group, the situation in Penadés showed tensions and confrontations, with public outings by sectoral political leaders questioning support and pressing for the rapid removal of the senator from the party.
“It has generated internal tensions between figures of the National Party and it is necessary to see how they close or advance in the context of an electoral campaign,” said Samudio, in relation to next year’s elections.
Samudio, also a specialist in the rights of children and adolescents, believes in any case that it is difficult for the Penadés case to strongly affect the National Party in electoral terms, mainly due to a consideration carried out very recently in the country by the UN Rapporteur on exploitation and child sexual abuse: their concern about the existence in Uruguay of a great naturalization or stigmatization of victims of commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.
“She marked a certain degree of naturalization or acceptance of the victims and this has an impact on the vision of citizens on this type of issue,” he said.
The details of the case in the Prosecutor’s document sent to Parliament left Penadés with no way out, who was forced to resign all his positions, his political force and was suspended as a senator.
The victims “in all cases are or were minors and men,” the tax document states, coming from “highly vulnerable social contexts.” According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Penadés’s behavior “has been sustained over the years.”
“From the statements obtained, there are similar ways to convince adolescents to agree to have sexual acts, how to access their bodies, get them to undress, kiss them, touch them, ask them to masturbate and give them oral sex, to Finally, in some cases, achieve something more,” says the document from the Prosecutor’s Office to which Télam had access.
President Lacalle Pou had supported Penadés as soon as the first complaint was known, around the end of March. “He would be a bad friend if I didn’t believe him,” he stated at the time.
But this week, hours before the senator’s impeachment, the president changed his position and described the complaints against his former party partner as serious.
Something similar happened with the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber, a close friend and fellow political current of Penadés. The official went from calling the accusations against his friend “infamy” to “very serious, terrible” allegations of sexual abuse in June.
Source: Ambito
