The Peruvian Attorney General’s Office has held a meeting with the Organization of American States (OAS) in which it has defended its constitutional complaint against President Pedro Castillo and in which it has addressed the democratic situation facing the country, all this after the president’s request to activate the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
A High Level mission of the OAS has heard the views on the political situation in the country of the Attorney General of the State, Patricia Benavides, who has justified her management at the head of the Public Ministry and the constitutional accusation presented before the Congress against the Peruvian president, as reported by the organization itself in a statement.
The Peruvian Attorney General’s Office has assured the OAS delegation that it is «false» that the constitutional accusation against Castillo is motivated by political issues or that it is part of a «strategy to break the democratic order», as the president of the country has repeatedly denounced.
In this sense, the Attorney General has specified that what was presented to the Parliament contains 190 «elements of conviction on the existence of an alleged criminal organization entrenched in the Executive Power», product of a preliminary investigation authorized by the Peruvian Supreme Court.
According to Benavides, the constitutional complaint is «the only thing her office could do» at a procedural and constitutional level, adding that «it was her obligation» to present it after having gathered «sufficient evidence of the commission of crimes», the Attorney General’s Office itself has informed in a letter.
However, the Attorney General’s Office has maintained that the separation and independence of public powers «is an essential element of representative democracy» which is recognized in the Peruvian Constitution, and in Article 3 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS.
In mid-October, the OAS Permanent Council decided to send a high-level delegation to Peru to conduct an analysis of the political situation in the Andean country at the request of President Castillo himself.
The Peruvian Executive formally requested the organization to activate Articles 17 and 18 of the Democratic Charter, through which the organization may provide assistance when «the government of a member state considers that its democratic political institutional process or its legitimate exercise of power is at risk».
