© Leonardo Rubilar
President Gabriel Boric and Senator Fabiola Campillai at the change of command ceremony.
One abstention, three votes once morest, two in favor and 18 opportunities in which she joined the unanimous agreement of the Chamber for matters of easy dispatch is the general summary of the first pronouncements that the independent senator Fabiola Campillai had in her initial week in the Congress.
Despite the short period, the senator from the capital, a victim of human rights violations during the outbreak and the most voted in the country with 402,000 votes, has already begun to mark some trends in her first actions, especially in the two occasions in which he has used the word.
One of those trends has been to vote once morest the right when a debate is generated in the Chamber. In fact, he only coincided with the legislators of the UDI, RN and Evópoli, in two low-conflict votes: the approval of an agreement between Chile and Jamaica and a project that promotes renewable energy, where the right also voted divided.
When Campillai went to vote in the parliamentary elections on November 21 last year, he had already anticipated that his candidacy would represent a “fighting and punishing vote for the right.”
The strategic vision of the legislator – who suffered a facial fracture and lost her vision, taste and smell, as a result of a tear gas from Carabineros – was clear in the political discussions, where she also sent some warnings to the government of President Gabriel Boric , emphasizing that there are intractable issues for her and in which she will act with full autonomy.
“I cannot accept that a problem of humanity is militarized… No to militarization in the north and Wallmapu,” he said last Wednesday, announcing the rejection of the extension of the emergency constitutional state of exception in the north, which had been requested by the government in order to maintain the Armed Forces. in support tasks in the face of the migratory crisis.
Despite the fact that La Moneda sent him minutes explaining the need for the extension, Campillai expressed his solidarity with the migrants and was the only vote once morest. This forced the head of the Interior, Izkia Siches, to take charge of her criticism in the hemicycle. In response, the minister said that she respected the senator’s opinion, but that the state of emergency sought precisely to meet the humanitarian needs of immigrants with the reinforcement of military personnel.
The position of the senator, in any case, had been anticipated to the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency, Giorgio Jackson, before the session.
“Chile is bored”
Another message from her was her abstention from the election of the table, where the socialist Álvaro Elizalde and the UDI Luz Ebensperger prevailed as president and vice president of the Senate. That election had involved almost all the political forces (from the unions to the PC), except for the RN, which chose to compete and opened a controversy in the inaugural session on March 11.
“Chile is bored with these fights and these negotiations, let’s vote now!” said the independent senator before announcing her abstention.
Although Campillai was not directly participating in the negotiations to choose the table and distribute the legislative commissions, in the negotiations she was represented by the senators of Approve Dignidad, with whom she formed a bench exclusively to maintain coordination on an administrative level, as she herself specified, when he associated with that political group.
“Today is a day of administrative agreements, but my independence will last until the end,” he said on January 11 following a lunch with senators from the PC, Frevs and Frente Amplio.
On March 10, the day the agreement that involved voting for Elizalde and Ebensperger was sealed, RD senator Juan Ignacio Latorre called her to inform her of the outcome of the negotiations. In addition, the day before, on March 9, he had held a telematic meeting with the other five senators from the Approve Dignity-independent caucus, where the progress of the talks was reported to him.
Senator Latorre (who formed a kind of sub-bench with Campillai, the RD-independent committee) reported that she was already internalized that the majority groups in the Senate had distributed the years of presidency and that Approve Dignidad’s commitment was to try to be duly incorporated in other legislative instances.
In particular, the senator from the capital was interested in integrating the Children’s and Human Rights commissions, which she will eventually preside over later.
Even so, apparently Campillai found it difficult to have to support a table where there was a representative from the right.
“She has marked her political points and her independence. For the voting of the table, we explained to her the agreement in which we were and she told us that she preferred to make a point of difference and that she was going to abstain. We communicate it to the other benches. And everyone understood that Fabiola was independent and she might vote differently. And of course, it was difficult for her to vote for someone from the UDI and because she felt more alienated from those conversations, ”says Latorre.
Respect for your independence
Some legislators from the ruling party point out that it will not be easy for the government and in particular for Minister Giorgio Jackson to enter into negotiations or obtain concessions from her, who in any case has a “good relationship” with President Boric, according to what she herself has said. .
However, in a scenario with 25 right-wing senators, the exact half of the Senate, its autonomy means that the government starts from a hypothetical support floor of 18 senators for its reforms. Currently neither the DC (with five legislators) nor the independent Karim Bianchi nor Campillai can be considered in advance as official votes.
Latorre, however, has a more positive outlook and believes that dialogue and common agendas on human rights, in addition to the project to achieve the freedom of the “prisoners of the revolt”, will help build trust. “We have a lot of respect for her independence and she represents a popular world, with all the burden that being a victim of human rights violations implies,” says the parliamentarian, while assuring that she is integrated into the group’s conversations.
The week before last, before taking office, Senator Campillai had lunch with the representatives of Approve Dignidad, but last Tuesday she was unable to participate in that same coordination instance.
On Wednesday, meanwhile, he held a meeting with Minister Jackson, whom he asked to make urgent the amnesty project that would benefit prisoners for demonstrations.
On Thursday, meanwhile, the senator met with the Minister of Justice, Marcela Ríos, who appointed her together with Undersecretary Haydée Oberreuter, in charge of the Unitary Table of Work on Reparation and Justice for victims of the social outbreak.
