While Hoy newspaper’s much-read column “Que se Dice” (What’s being said) is reproaching Danilo Medina’s statements, President Fernandez seems to be saying just the opposite regarding his minister. President Leonel Fernandez told his audience at the closing ceremonies of the XII Meeting of the Montevideo Circle that “impunity will not be exchanged for anything in this country. All who have violated the law… will have to face the judicial system.”
Thus the Chief Executive rejected accusations that the Justice Department had negotiated legislative action on government proposals and pending legal actions against former government officials, a quid pro quo that the President rejected out of hand.
Hoy newspaper’s Que se Dice columnist called Medina’s statements relating to the release of audits “unfortunate.” The columnist says that tying the release of the supposedly explosive audits to the former administration’s attitude regarding legislative proposals and political opposition is only the use of a long-time political weapon, blackmail, that the new incumbents had so roundly criticized when it was recently used by the PRD senators.
The columnist stated that not only does the statement strip the government of all moral authority to criticize a political weapon that has been rejected by the more sensible sectors of the society, but it also gives strength to the argument of those that say that the people in the Presidential Palace are not really interested in persecuting administrative corruption and it threatens to eliminate the little faith that people have in government institutions, beginning with the political parties themselves and ending with democracy as a system of government.
The same newspaper in its editorial today criticizes the Senate and the government for mutual blackmail. “Neither of the two attitudes is convenient for the welfare of the country,” writes the editorial writer. The newspaper calls for maximum transparency and requests that the results of the audits be made public, regardless that they may shake the nation.
It urges that the prerogatives of the newly passed General Law for Free access to Public Information No. 200-04 be used so that the information be released in the name of transparency.