Peru’s National Police has asked the government for a payment equivalent to 25.4 million euros to cover the costs of deploying personnel to control the protests.
The request is contained in a document dated December 14, a week after the ousting of President Pedro Castillo, and also calls for the declaration of a state of emergency to contain the protests, as would occur later.
The text indicates that “the executing unit does not have the budgetary resources to finance the said additional expenditure” and suggests that “the declaration of the state of emergency be managed with the corresponding budgetary allocation for its funding.”
The document estimates that of the total 130,785 police officers in the country, 127,722 would receive a “30-day emergency zone bonus” as compensation.
“There are always a number of expenses. For example, when personnel have to be deployed to another area, the state has to cover their expenses and benefits,” pointed out former Deputy Minister of Internal Order, Ricardo Valdés, who considers, however, that this is an excessive expense, according to La República.
The political crisis that has rocked Peru since December, with anti-government protests, is also a reflection of the huge gap between the capital and the poor provinces that support Castillo, who is of Amerindian origin, and who has never been accepted in the Presidential Palace by the elite and the oligarchy of the capital, and by the main ‘media’, owned by wealthy businessmen.
