Rafael, beware of the Defense, a chronicle by Fernando Vivas about the role of Minister Belaúnde Llosa

In other photos, from a series of 8, two were handcuffed. Therefore, we can be sure they were detainees. We cannot assert that it was a formal interrogation, but in the images they are seen facing the minister as if they were conversing.

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Óscar Arriola, the questioned general commander of the PNP, is in the background in the photos, at a desk, observing what was presumably his staged scene with an accidental protagonist. Keiko therefore had three problems.

A minister crowding another, a proceeding as alleged as it was improper, and the Executive entangled in a murky police narrative. On Wednesday, in Piura, the president faced the press to answer the obvious question: “Minister Belaúnde has not participated in any interrogation. The interrogations have been carried out by the National Police,” she said.

Regarding the portfolio overlap, he repeated what Astudillo had already explained on Tuesday: that a family health problem held him back and he could not immediately go to Trujillo, where his sector was burning. “Minister [Belaúnde] said that he could attend and, therefore, I made the decision for him to go,” added Keiko. Rafael, punished, remorseful, and silent; was by her side.

Selfie ban

Rafael Belaúnde has the life of the teacher’s pet, always ready to do whatever the teacher asks. While others try to travel only as strictly necessary, he cultivates the gift of ubiquity, overflowing the visibility he is entitled to.

He has a difference, which he has not fully assumed, with Marco Vinelli from Agriculture, Luis Dyer from Health, or Astudillo himself. Those three are figures in the orange sphere.

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Dyer can appear in videos because he was the hero of the poll agents’ campaign; while Vinelli led the government plan.

For Rafael, who is a guest, the orange environment wants him more restrained, without excesses or selfies. Notice that the most functional thing would have been to put the Defense Minister in charge of coordinating the FEN (El Niño Phenomenon) emergency, as was the case with Jorge Nieto, Mindef under PPK, in the 2017 FEN; but Keiko and Prime Minister Luis Galarreta placed Vinelli, who is from Agriculture.

Of course, Rafael would have taken the FEN into his hands and, when it intensified, worn boots up to the belly button; but, I repeat, he is a guest. Initially, as I have told in a previous chronicle, he was going to be Minister of Energy and Mines (he was in Martín Vizcarra’s government); but he had private relations with the sector that caused Keiko and Galarreta to assign him to Defense. Precisely, the first interpellation motion that has come from Juntos Por el Perú (JP) is against him and points to those relations, specifically with the mining company Poderosa. The motion is not so forceful because more than criticizing alleged conflicts of interest of the minister (the question asked if Armed Forces personnel guarded the company), it reveals JP’s closeness to informal mining at war against the largest mine in the Pataz region.

The minister has understood Keiko’s call for discipline. He has not released more photos, not even the selfies he used to post on the way to his destinations. The last one showed him sitting on a plane, with a serious face, as there was no room for a smile: “Heading to Lima, to continue working for national security.” He was coming from Trujillo, while Astudillo was heading there to correct the narrative of the Arriola administration: the PNP had not freed the kidnapped mining businessman, as Rafael wanted us to believe in the same way he, naively, would have believed it. Alvarado was freed, according to his family’s hint, by his own management.

Astudillo, so far, does not set the tone, the energy, or his presence in the Cabinet; but a former general commander of the Armed Forces will not let himself be walked over by the general commander of the PNP, even if he does not know what to do with him, whether to dismiss him or endure him. But that is the dilemma of the troubled ‘Mininter’ Astudillo; the one for our Mindef in the spotlight is another: how to refrain, for now, from farming image, purely out of eagerness, when emergencies – nature and crime oblige – will still put him on the front pages, along with his portfolio, later.

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