President Gabriel Boric defended this Monday the appointment of Javier Velasco as Chilean ambassador to Spain. Velasco has been the target of criticism for being involved in different controversies, such as questioning the governments of “the 30 years”, when sectors of the ex-Concertación are part of the Executive.
“There is no one in the Government who is the product of a family relationship or friendship,” said the head of state in conversation with the morning of TVN, Good morning to all. “There is no one who is in the State today who does not have the powers to be there and who is there for the reason of being someone’s friend,” he added.
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He also indicated that “I don’t have 600 friends, I’m not Roberto Carlos.”
About Velasco, he stated that “he is a lawyer, with a master’s degree from a prestigious university in the United States, who worked for several years in public service and throughout the history of international relations there are embassies that are political.”
“Throughout the history of international relations there are embassies that are political. Spain is a particularly important country with which we have relations and where there are embassies, the vast majority of which are career officials and there are some that are political embassies”, he continued.
“The ambassador of Spain is not here to be my friend, in fact, I don’t know the ideas that were passed around regarding intimate friendships or not, but he is not here for that reason, he is here because of his professional skills,” he added.
“I invite the media to ask Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former president of Spain, what is your opinion of the current Chilean ambassador to Spain. That they ask the representatives in the Parliament of Spain what opinion they have of the ambassador in Spain, I assure you that they will have an impeccable opinion”, he emphasized.
Let us remember that in September, in the framework of a forum in Madrid, Velasco said that in the governments of “the 30 years” there were “policies that deepened inequality” that had an impact on the social explosion. This generated annoyance in representatives of Democratic Socialism.
Later, in the same month, a photo of the ambassador caressing his partner’s feet while they were in the back seat of a vehicle was spread on social networks. For this reason, La Moneda caught his attention.
At the end of September, the board of directors of the Association of Career Diplomats (Adica) expressed concern about the “multiple and unnecessary controversies in matters of foreign relations in the last period”, and pointed to the particular case of the embassy in Spain, led by Javier Velasco.
