Several tail blows brought the declaration leak made by the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, before the prosecutor Xavier Armendarizwho in addition to the complaints of rape and sexual abuse against Manuel Monsalve -facts for which the former undersecretary was sent this Tuesday to preventive detention to the Rancagua prison -, also investigates the chronology how the Government found out about the complaint, the time it took to react, and the possible responsibilities in this regard.
In his testimony, published this Monday by T13Tohá se dissociated himself from the main decisions taken by President Boric, ensuring, among other points, that the president held a meeting with Monsalve on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 15 which she did not attend; that in that meeting Boric gave Monsalve permission to travel south to inform your family of your situation; that just On Thursday the 17th he attended the meeting in which he asked him to resign -date in which she did not say a word-; and that it was he who authorized Monsalve to resign from La Moneda.
To make matters worse, this Tuesday a report from The Clinic revealed that the president in the meantime discussed the entire matter with his closest advisors, Miguel Crispi (chief advisor) and Carlos Duran (chief of staff), an issue that opened a new flank in the Government and caused angry reactions from the oppositionwho criticized the delay of almost 48 hours in expelling the former “security czar” from the Government, time that Monsalve used to order the PDI to carry out the proceedings “with stealth” aimed at finding out if the victim, a 32-year-old subordinate, I was thinking about reporting it or not.
According to his testimony, the director of the PDI, Eduardo Cernahe informed him October 15 -around 4 p.m.-, that an accusation of rape was against Monsalve and that he had asked the PDI to review the hotel cameras where the events under investigation occurred. He immediately dialed the head of government’s number to inform him, and “On that call the President sounded impressed, surprised, he didn’t know,” held.
Boric then summoned Monsalve to La Moneda, at 8:00 p.m. “I note that I did not participate in that meeting and as for what they talked about, I did not have any further details,” he continued. “After the meeting, Mr. President told me that he had instructed Monsalve to call me that same night to meet with me, a call that did not happen.”
That night, at around 10:30 p.m., Cerna called Tohá to ask that Monsalve appear at the Panamericamo hotel, where the Public Ministry was beginning to carry out its operations. first expert reports.
“On Wednesday the 16th I tried to contact Mr. Monsalve to carry out the conversation that the President had defined and it was not possible (…) When I informed the President of this, “He told me that Monsalve was in the south, since he had instructed him to go and tell his family,” he added.
“I was supposed to return that same Wednesday, however, arrived on Thursday the 17th directly to the session of Congress,” he said.
On Thursday morning, Tohá asked Monsalve if had had sex with the young subordinate, to which the former socialist militant responded that “I wasn’t sure, but I thought so.”
Boric then summoned both of them to a meeting at 2 p.m., in La Moneda, “opportunity in which Monsalve would be informed what was going to be done with his situation”he detailed. At said meeting “the president asked him how he was, to which Monsalve told him that he was fine, except for the 12 hours of his life that he did not remember. After this, Mr. Monsalve said that his lawyer had told him that resigning would harm his defense.”
However, the highest authority in the country, Boric, told him that he needed his resignation. “and instructed him to go down immediately to inform the press before leaving the Palace.”
This Tuesday, the bench of UDI deputies accused a “pact of silence” inside La Moneda and aimed directly at the second floor of La Monedawhere the offices of his main advisors, Miguel Crispi and Carlos Durán, are located, asking for his immediate resignation, since “They were incapable of assessing the severity of the crisis and acting accordingly.”
“As more information becomes known, La Moneda seems to be more involved in this serious case (…) Instead of recommending the immediate departure of former undersecretary Monsalve, as would have been appropriate, they preferred to set up this real pact of silence to act in a hidden way, without public opinion knowing,” they lashed out at a press point.
According to the union parliamentarians, it was the same president “who self-defined his administration as the ‘first feminist government’ in the history of the country, but at the first opportunity, where a complaint involves one of their ownthey forget about the complainant, relegate her to the background and do everything in their power to protect themselves. That will be the legacy of the Government,” they concluded.
Asked about this this day, Monsalve’s replacement in the Undersecretary of the Interior, Luis Cordero, was cautious.
“For this I want to refer to the statements of Minister (Carolina) Tohá, on October 29. That day, Minister Tohá, together with Minister (Antonia) Orellana, explicitly pointed out in the session of the Chamber of Deputies, that “Things could always have been done better.”.
“With the information that the government has, at that time, different decisions could have been made. That self-critical version, Minister Tohá and the government, pointed out since October 29,” Cordero indicated.
More honest, perhaps, was the vice president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eric Aedo (DC), who read between the lines: “What I see is that from the statements of the Minister of the Interior and other advisors, The President of the Republic is left in an exposed situation. The assertion that the decision for former Undersecretary Monsalve to travel to Concepción was a decision of the President himself in which no other authority participated, “It seems to me that it is exposing the President,” he reasoned.
