It was following 7:00 p.m. on Thursday when the conventional Constance San Juan (Ind), along with several of his peers, gave a press point at the former Congress in Santiago. Reading his cell phone, he listed with name and surname the 10 socialists -in addition to Renato Garin (Ind)– who generally rejected the second report of the Committee on the Environment, which was voted on that day by the plenary session.
The accusation was directed at the conventional Socialist Collective (CS) Carlos Calvo, Adriana Cancino, Tomás Laibe, César Valenzuela, Patricio Fernández, Maximiliano Hurtado, Pedro Muñoz, Ricardo Montero, Matías Orellana and Ramona Reyes. They were part of the 46 votes once morest the report – among which were also the right and the Collective of Approval – which, together with eight abstentions, made the text fall and be returned to the commission in its entirety.
Among its regulations, this included an article that changed water rights for use authorizations, and another that replaced mining concessions with authorizations issued by the State.
The declarations of the conventional ones to the press were preceded by harsh summonses that occurred in the hemicycle, as soon as the vote concluded. “Traitors, traitors!”exclaimed some members of the group of self-styled “eco-constituents” -Juan José Martin, Camila Zárate, Elsa Labraña, Alvin Saldaña, Gloria Alvarado, Francisco Caamaño, Cristóbal Andrade, among others-, targeting the socialists.
Thus, once once more the CS was at the center of criticism from its peers. But this time with “funas” and shouts once morest him, which caused the Presidente Gabriel Boric would pronounce on it. “It is absolutely unacceptable and I am concerned that there are people who believe that the way to resolve differences is through aggression, fun or insult,” he said yesterday.
Words with which the vice president of the Convention agreed, Gaspar Domínguez. “We must have the capacity for these passions to reach a limit, and in my opinion that limit is to disqualify the other,” he told Radio Agriculture.
Later a manifesto of the PS was known. “We denounce the attitude of total intolerance of those who claim impose their ideas by way of political bullying to silence the opinion of others. This conduct is undemocratic and severely harms coexistence within the Convention”raised the executive board of the store, at a time when the constituent body is preparing to make definitions on key matters, such as the Political System, and in the midst of a rise in the Rejection option in the polls.
The criticisms of the Socialists did not come from a particular group, and were extrapolated to others such as the Broad Front. After the plenary session, the conventional ones approached Constanza Schönhaut, Daniel Stingo and Ignacio Achurra with their socialist counterpart Tomás Laibe to claim him for his vote.
In the FA they recognize their discomfort. They point out that the behavior of the PS in the vote on Thursday “It generates political difficulties, because the basis of their arguments is not understood.” They assure that they were in the mood to approve in general and, later, in particular, to reject several articles of the report. In this sense, one of its conventional ones points out that the voted text “was very deficient”. But that strategically it was worth approving in general to “clean” the text and warn the plenary’s position regarding the issues addressed in the proposal.
The same sources point out that the agreement for the general vote on the reports -when they are approved or rejected as a block- is to approve them, unless there is an express request for commission coordination (an agreement unknown to the SC).
They also argue that the socialists had a similar behavior in the last vote of the Political System, a commission in which they also face criticism and whose negotiation enters a key stage in the midst of this tense environment.
In this way, Christian Viera (FA) I affirm that “Political discrepancies are legitimate. However, what happened yesterday was an error in the PS’s strategy, because it was not necessary to lengthen the process”. The lawyer added that “this in no way diminishes the responsibility for the behavior of those who yesterday reacted violently.”
For their part, the Socialists argue that rejecting the report in general was convenient, since most of its articles would have had the same fate in particular. And they remember that in the vote on the first report of the Environment Commission, only one paragraph of a total of 40 articles was approved.
Yesterday, during the plenary session of the Political System, there were interventions to condemn the episode. And several conventional accused, without mentioning who, that there were even advisers who recriminated the socialists.
Asked regarding what happened, Laibe stated that “Obviously a tension is generated, but this is normal in the Convention, we have had many moments like this. The difference is that at this moment we have entered into personal disqualifications and we do not share that. We expect the collectives to reject this bullying attitude”.
He also added that as a group they were evaluating taking actions in the Ethics Committee.
The rejection of the report would also pose additional stress to the times of the Convention. From the Constituent Social Movements, one of the groups that gathers the most eco-constituents, one of its conventionalists transmits that the seriousness of the matter is that “those who rejected in general knew that this broke the schedule.”
