Pointing to their own directive, deputies Yovana Ahumada, Víctor Pino, Roberto Arroyo, Enrique Lee and Gloria Naveillan, gave an account of what they considered to be two extremely serious events for the People’s Party (PDG) caucus, after losing the election of the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies in which Vlado Mirosevic (Liberal Party – Democratic Socialism) was victorious.
Let us remember that the People’s Party (PDG) and the Christian Democracy (DC) —which even had a candidate supported by the opposition— failed to unite their forces and their militants voted divided. Both political forces were part of the March agreement with the ruling party, which was broken after both communities refused to support the Communist Party (PC) candidate Karol Cariola for the presidency of the Lower House.
From La Moneda, before Cariola’s withdrawal, Mirosevic’s option was lifted, which attracted the support of some independents and part of the DC and the PDG. Meanwhile, in the opposition they tried to promote the option of the PDG deputy Víctor Pino, but ended up voting for the DC Miguel Ángel Calisto. In any case, neither of these two parties managed to align their militants.
In DC, despite the fact that Calisto was the opposition candidate, only four of the seven deputies from the Falangist caucus supported him. These were Eric Aedo, Joanna Pérez, Jorge Saffirio, and Calisto himself. Meanwhile, Héctor Barría, Ricardo Cifuentes and Alberto Undurraga voted for Mirosevic.
The case of the PDG was similar; four militants supported Calisto and three Mirosevic, Enrique Lee voted blank and Gaspar Rivas did not vote. In detail, while Rubén Oyarzo, Francisco Pulgar and Karen Medina favored Mirosevic, Ahumada, Pino, Arroyo and Naveillan supported Calisto. The latter addressed the “break” denounced by the same party.
First, “we witnessed how some members of our caucus let go of his hand and turned their backs on one of our own, serving their personal interests to the detriment of the interests of our people. Loyalty is an uncompromising principle,” they pointed out Along with this, the deputies “not off the hook” of the PDG affirmed that their peers “have ignored an internal democratic process of the caucus that determined, by the absolute majority of its members, that the deputy Víctor Pino would be the one who would represent the caucus as candidate for the presidency of the House. Said process, they specified, “was carried out just last Saturday night, and had no objections at the time it was carried out.”
These “extremely serious” events were denounced by the PDG deputies who finally opted for Calisto, after, after a post-vote meeting of the presidency of the Lower House, the party recognized that “an internal break has been generated“.
The deputies clarified, through a letter after that of their party that evidenced the fissure, that “8 of 9 members of the caucus decided to sign a new agreement with only 1 abstention, from deputy Pulgar. And in a second vote, to electing the candidate for the presidency of the Chamber, 2 candidates were proposed, the deputy Karen Medina and the deputy Víctor Pino, the first obtained 2 votes, so deputy Pino prevailed by majority”.
However, they charged that minutes before the session, and after holding a final meeting with the Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency (Segpres) Ana Lya Uriarte, and receiving the National Directorate invited by Deputy Rubén Oyarzo, “these deputies decided to question this process without arguments”.
In the opinion of the PDG deputies who supported Pino and Calisto, “these attitudes are a lack of respect for the bases.” They added that “we cannot ignore democratic processes because we do not like the results” and emphasized that “we came to change the way of doing politics, not to take on the bad customs of a sector, which seeks to impose the will of a minority by treason. “.
The “icing on the cake” that crowns a series of unclarified situations
According to the declaration of the deputies “not off the hook” of the PDG, there was “pressure exerted to ask for our votes to the left.” In that sense, they assured that prior to the election of the president of the Chamber “we had a sudden visit to the parliamentary offices of the deputies Medina and Oyarzo of the minister Ana Lya Uriarte.”
Without giving further details about said meeting, these “pressures”, according to the parliamentarians, “were joined by the National Directorate of the People’s Party, who always insisted that we support the left, and despite having declared to the deputies that ‘ they would respect and support the majority decision of the bench’, this was not the case”. Moreover, they stated that they even “refused to carry out the digital consultation so that the bases could decide whether or not we supported Karol Cariola.” In that sense, they pointed to the party’s declaration in which the internal breakdown was evidenced.
“We consider it unacceptable that the Supreme Court of the party was sent to ‘threaten’ our Head of the Caucus so that she would maintain the agreement with the left. Even in contravention of our statutes and regulations, said members of the Supreme Court who made such threats met with the night of Monday, November 7 at 10:00 p.m., with the National Board, to plan their statement with the sole interest of asking for our departure and taking control of our entire party,” they lashed out.
Deputies Ahumada, Pino, Arroyo, Lee and Naveillan considered that this attitude of the party’s National Directorate is “the ‘icing on the cake’ that crowns a series of unclarified situations that they have been made aware of.” Under this slogan, they also considered that “it is time to call for transparent and democratic elections of the National Directorate and of all the organs of the PDG”, since “the challenges that the party is going to face from now on require a board democratically elected and not appointed by the secretariat”.
“We make a call to the bases and adherents to save the People’s Party and demand free, transparent and democratic elections,” they sentenced.
