“The dead you killed are in good health.” That was the message, collected from a literary work, that the mayor of Colina sent this morning, Mario Olavarría (UDI), to the WhatsApp chat between the government and the community leaders of Chile Vamos.
The text – addressed to the President Sebastián Piñera– Root of the annoyance installed among the councilors due to the decision of the Executive not to resort to a veto against the law that limits reelection, which left 97 mayors prevented from running.
The words, in addition, were the last of Olavarría in that chat, because he abandoned it along with the majority of the communal chiefs who participated in that instance, which also includes the minister of the Segegob, Karla Rubilar.
The words of the communal head of Colina, in any case, were not the only ones against Piñera, but there were several more. However, the President would have remained silent, while Rubilar tried to calm things down with some messages that, however, did not contain the annoyance of the councilors, which continues to grow.
In the opinion of several of them, the government “deceived” them and never had the will to veto the initiative. This, despite the multiple warnings they made – with electoral reports in hand – regarding the repercussions that this decision will have for the center-right due to the risk of losing emblematic communes.
In fact, at least two mayors say part of their unease is that the government never took the idea of vetoing seriously. and that the evidence for that, they add, is that the ministers of the political committee told them that they should be in charge of getting the votes in Congress. That attitude, affirm the same sources, was one of the points that most exacerbated the annoyance. Among the councilors, they consider that, with this, the secretaries of state ignored the political articulation in Parliament.
So, the mayors who left the government chat decided to create a new group, called “the incumbents”, in which all those who will be affected by the regulations who are evaluating which paths to follow participate. The Amuch, for example, commissioned a legal report that will be ready this Wednesday, which, among other matters, includes the alternative that mayors who cannot go to reelection can apply to another commune.
The exit of the chat that they shared with Piñera is not the only sign of annoyance that the communal chiefs have shown. On Friday they also left another WhatsApp group that shared the presidents of associations of mayors with the interior minister, Gonzalo Blumel, and his pair of the Segpres, Claudio Alvarado.
To this was added the councilors’ offensive to prevent the government from vetoing the basic services project and promulgate it as soon as possible. “This is not the time or the opportunity to appear taking the side of the companies,” said a letter sent to Piñera on Saturday by 42 ruling mayors.
Also, there have been several virtual meetings that have been a kind of catharsis, where the mayors have analyzed the situation. One of the last was yesterday, in which more than 30 union mayors and the president of the UDI participated, Jacqueline van Rysselberghe, who had issued Friday, in an interview with T13.cl, harsh statements against government driving and Blumel. In this context, the UDI helmsman transmitted – according to those present – that the relationship between La Moneda and the party had changed. And this last point is shared transversally by mayors, including RN, who say that the relationship between the government and the communal chiefs will never be the same and that they will no longer act as a “shield” to come out in defense of the President.
Several mayors share Van Rysselberghe’s sayings about political leadership and the role Blumel played in preventing the veto from succeeding. Mayor Olavarría, in fact, deepens his criticism and says that the chief of staff should leave his post.
“The interior minister was behind this clearly out of interest, he stopped being interior minister to be minister of Evópoli, who gambled to make it so”, points out. In his opinion, “the government knew that the votes were in, they never wanted to veto and they left us waiting three weeks, one last day with paraphernalia and the interior minister saying that it was out of conviction; I mean they never wanted to do this “
Likewise, the Mayor of Colina stresses that “Clearly there is a before and after in the relationship with the government” and that “Blumel has a political problem, in many communes there are security problems and the truth is that people blame us, but the truth is that we say things as they are: it is a problem for the government and Blumel, and has ostensibly failed on the issue. ”
And he adds: “The Minister of the Interior was the one who made the maneuver so that the law was not vetoed, they went. We do not trust him, he is not a person who brings together. He should get out of office, he doesn’t give confidence, he doesn’t guarantee security. ”
In the saga of the failed veto, the UDI also unsuccessfully resorted to the former minister Andrés Chadwick. About two weeks ago, the former Minister of the Interior met virtually with Olavarría, who serves as vice president of the Association of Municipalities of Chile, and with the president of that body, Rodrigo Delgado (UDI). There was also its executive director, Andrés Chacón, and the executive director of the Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo, Marcela Cubillos.
At that meeting, the mayors showed Chadwick the Amuch report that warned of the electoral damage caused to the right by the President not to send the veto: along with losing important communes, such as Viña del Mar, Temuco and Chillán, the The document estimated that the incumbent mayors affected were equivalent to some 1,800,000 voters.
As they recall there, Chadwick would have said that he would share it with the President, a management that some community leaders were doing. In the UDI they say that the presidential candidate was also aware of the text Joaquín Lavín.
Towards the end of last week, around Thursday or Friday – when the deadline for Piñera to settle once and for all whether he would veto or not – Olavarría would have contacted the former minister again, asking him to give one last push. “I already did,” would have been the reply. The mayor also reportedly contacted Pablo Longueira.
On the side of those affected by the end of the re-election they add something more that increases the annoyance with Evópoli, the party theoretically most benefited with this plot and in which the Interior Minister militates, to the detriment of the UDI and RN.
The day after Piñera announced that he was going to enact the law without vetoing it, they say, they found out that this community was already socializing the search for candidates for the municipal primaries, in order to speed up the dispute over the vacancies. . This is what they say, for example, what happened in the IX Region, where Evópoli has the senator Felipe Cupboard and the deputy and former mayor Andrés Molina. In Temuco, one of the casualties is the mayor RN Miguel Becker.
“Piñera managed to unite the two sides of the UDI”, shows a historic mayor of the party. There they insist that the most powerful indicator of the depth of the crisis is that practically all the unionism is aligned in this round, including the dissent to Van Rysselberghe.
Part of these criticisms are also shared by Cubillos, as he said yesterday on Channel 13, where, in addition, he warned that he expected Minister Alvarado, his friend, to do more. And today her husband, Senator RN Andrés Allamand, he said on Radio Pauta that there is “a deficit in driving”.
One example was that the senator shared the harsh interview that she gave to T13.cl on Friday, in which she said that “the disaffection of the UDI towards the government is growing”, and that “that coin with two faces is what we at the UDI have us tired ”. Van Rysselberghe shared the interview twice – her preview and then her full version – in a WhatsApp group called “UDI Congress”, which includes parliamentarians, ministers and former party ministers, but also the President herself.
What followed was a series of criticisms and lamentations of different tones from those present. Among the parliamentarians who intervened, according to participants, included the senator Juan Antonio Coloma, who stated that what happened was a great penalty that caused profound damage to the party. His son, the deputy of the same name, would have argued that it was also a serious injustice that was damaging to the community.
The deputy also joined Jaime Bellolio. He asserted that in addition to the episode of the failed veto and its consequences, how profound and delicate is the signal given by the government in the matter of constitutional projects: that with what happened with the postnatal period, in the end La Moneda agreed with the “wayward ”Of the sector that supported these initiatives and turned its back on UDI militants who opposed it.
This edge is also an integral part of the crisis with the government, which does not consist only of the “mayors case”. In the party the annoyance against RN for the postnatal episode has not been extinguished and the alleged inaction of the minister Christian Monckeberg, since his wife, the deputy Paulina Núñez, he leaned towards the controversial initiative.
To the UDI Secretary General, Felipe SalaberryThey remember him writing there that what happened caused grief and disappointment. Senators such as Alejandro García-Huidobro and David Sandoval. To all this, the latter is in favor of the withdrawal of 10% of the AFPs, although with a series of conditions, according to a proposal that works with Senator DC Ximena Rincon and with the PS Alfonso de Urresti.
Chadwick, they say there, did not comment or write anything while this was going on. And they report that the only UDI minister of the political committee, Alvarado, intervened in defense of the government. There, he would have shown that there were no votes available for the veto. And he received several responses back.
President? Three of those present report that he did not pick up the glove or comment on anything. But that a long time later (several hours, a version is required) he limited himself to posting the text of the enactment of the law that limits reelection.
This morning, several of the UDI parliamentarians, as well as members of the political commission – which is meeting this afternoon – stressed to The Third PM that the relationship with La Moneda and the President is going through a critical moment. “It is frustrating,” illustrates one; “We can’t expect anything at this point,” graphs another. “We no longer believe them,” said one more. And one of its mayors shows that “they are only now realizing how serious this is.”
Amid the official disorder, La Moneda has tried to contain the criticism. The ministers have contacted the parliamentarians of the bloc. In addition, the issue was discussed today in the expanded political committee.
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