From the opposition they supported the Self-criticism raised by former President Ricardo Lagos for how Transantiago and the Credit were implemented with Aval del Estado, CAE, during his government, as the former president points out in an extract from his memoirs, mentioned in El Mercurio.
“The need to finance that large number of young people who had the requirements to enter university, but lacked the economic possibilities with which to pay more scholarships, but this would have involved a long discussion about income and the increase in taxes. For all these reasons, we do not consider it viable. This is how the CAE solution emerged (…) Our responsibility points to we did not know how to project how far the amounts to be paid by the students could go ”, affirmed about the CAE.
Regarding Transantiago, Lagos affirms that it was a mistake to accept the constant decrease of the bus fleet and assumes the responsibility of “having started a program without having sufficient safeguards regarding its operation and form of financing.”
“My responsibility was to have progressively accepted -in the different models with which it worked- that the number of buses be drastically reduced from seven thousand to four thousand, pointing out that the difference could be absorbed by the networks that were being incorporated into the Metro ”, he stated.
The senator of the Socialist Party, Álvaro Elizalde, appreciated the criticism of the public policies implemented during his term, adding that his book could serve as a diagnosis of the social demands that persist to this day.
For his part, the deputy of the Party for Democracy, Ricardo Celis shares with the former president, that the current Constitution was the main obstacle to public policies that were thought from the Concertación.
On the other hand, from the ruling party, the deputy of National Renewal, Miguel Mellado, criticized that the former president has not been able to see the failure of the implementation of the CAE and the Transantiago, detracting from his status as a statesman.
Likewise, Mellado maintained that the former president had no “political doll” during his government.
Along the same lines, the UDI deputy, Juan Antonio Coloma, believes that Lagos should do more self-criticism for the constitutional reform carried out during his mandate.
The second volume of memoirs of the former president, Ricardo Lagos, will be launched in August, which will cover the years between 1988 and 2006.
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