Opposition parliamentarians attribute to the Executive a strategy of forcing a vote due to the absence of several deputies due to travel or medical leave.
The countdown of the vote in the Chamber of the Chamber of Deputies has already begun on the report of the mixed commission for the fourth withdrawal of funds from the AFPs and a second advance of life annuities, due to the urgency of immediate discussion assigned by the Executive forced a decision for today. And everything indicates that there would be no votes for it to be approved.
From 10:00 am, the parliamentarians will analyze the text that needs 93 votes to advance and that is voted in a single act, that is, without separation of topics.
According to calculations by the opposition, at least eleven deputies would not attend in person to vote because they were abroad or with a medical license, several of whom supported the project in the first process.
The senator and president of the mixed commission, Pedro Araya, acknowledged that “the panorama is complex, especially because this is an electoral move, they put an immediate discussion on it, because they know that the project runs the risk of not being approved, there are several deputies outside the country and took advantage of this contingency by summoning an extraordinary session ”.
The Minister of Finance, Rodrigo Cerda, replied that immediate discussion is a legal tool that is available, emphasizing that the interest of the Executive is that “there is as little uncertainty as possible, because this is having economic and social effects.”
This has contributed to tense the atmosphere in the Chamber to such an extent that the deputy Jorge Durán (RN) threatened to present a fifth bill if it is confirmed that the aforementioned urgency is part of a strategy of the Executive to hinder the vote of the fourth round, making him fall for lack of quorum. Something that DC legislator Gabriel Silber takes for granted, noting that “by speeding up the vote, what the Government wants is for the fourth withdrawal to fall.” Everything, while from the Senate they take a box, for now.
As there are no more than enough votes, the presidential candidate, Gabriel Boric, suspended his attendance at the debate organized by the Association of Entrepreneurs of Chile (Asech) today due to a time limit and to be able to vote, which caused the annoyance of the organization that affirmed him they will still have their seat reserved.
The constitutional look
But the number of votes is not the last problem faced by the resolution of the mixed commission. The lawyer Patricio Zapata warned that the report presents several problems – “some of them very serious” -, such as the advance payment of life annuities.
In his opinion, the former “seriously violated the right to property”, both in relation to the permanent part of the Constitution and to the country’s international obligations. And the fact that it is now proposed – once the advance payment has been paid – that the affiliate receives the originally agreed life annuity again, constitutes a constitutional reform that allowed the third withdrawal. “What was already very unconstitutional at the end of April in terms of annuities, now, eight months later, would become, if the project is approved, something mega-constitutional,” he said.
The constitutionalist Tomás Jordán does not see “a more complex scenario” for the Government to resort to the TC. Not only because of his last experience in that instance, as a result of the third withdrawal, where the court chose not to accept his request; but also because, in parallel, the Constitutional Convention is evaluating the functioning of the public powers.
It seems to him that this “may be an inhibiting factor for the Constitutional Court and, therefore, with less chance of a requirement being successful.”
While for LyD’s lawyer, María Paz Valenzuela, the advance of life annuities charged to a fiscal loan “is a poorly oriented proposal, since it does not have any technical or numerical support” and “there is no information on the impact that such measure would imply for the Treasury ”.
It specifies that although the project establishes that the pensioner must return the advance made through the reduction of 5% of the remaining income “it is, in many cases, a bad credit because the life expectancy is less to the term of the payment of the credit ”.
– .
