While waiting for President Gabriel Boric’s decision, talks and speculation are taking place in the Senate regarding who will be the Government’s candidate to head the Public Ministry, among the five names that make up the five names drawn up by the Supreme Court: Carlos Palma, Juan Agustín Meléndez, Nayalet Mansilla, Ángel Valencia and the recently incorporated Erika Maira. This will be the third attempt by the Executive to have the Upper House approve its proposal for National Prosecutor, after the refusals of José Morales and Marta Herrera.
In this context, in the midst of a complex scenario for the Government and the Ministers of Justice, Marcela Ríos, and of Segpres, Ana Lya Uriarte, questions begin to arise regarding the political responsibility of the other two powers of the State, with a National Congress, which for some, has not been self-critical enough in relation to its own past decisions, which have had an impact on the crisis that the Public Ministry is currently going through, and which has been one of the factors that has made an election of a National Prosecutor impossible. with minimum standards of transparency and probity.
The one who shares this vision is the former prosecutor in the Penta Case, Carlos Gajardo, who through his social networks has stated that an important part of the current institutional crisis is linked to the “very deficient work of Jorge Abbott as National Prosecutor and the way in which who was chosen.” For the lawyer, said contest showed opacity and a constant search by senators to find a person who would ensure “impunity in political causes.” Gajardo insists that the Senate has an enormous responsibility in this process, and so far, he says he has not heard any voice of self-criticism from the Corporation.
Precisely, one of the parliamentarians who was part of the election of Jorge Abbott, in October 2015, is the senator who is a member of the Constitution, Legislation, Justice and Regulation commission, Alfonso de Urresti (PS), who made his own self-criticism for having supported Abbott eight years ago, and recently questioning the nomination of Marta Herrera, accusing her of being the continuity of the previous management, which the Upper House itself sponsored. For the pro-government senator, decisions like this imply making partial evaluations of each of the candidates.
“First of all, point out that one believes in the proposal of the President or the President. In a system of three powers of the State, a fifth was elaborated, in that case – 2015 – President Bachelet made a proposal and we approved that proposal I believe that it is necessary to make a self-criticism, in the sense that, for a decision of such an important institution, it is necessary to have partial evaluations”, assumed De Urresti.
Meanwhile, the senator of the Constitution Commission said that it is not possible for an entity such as the Public Ministry to not have any type of evaluation or effective accountability for eight years. In this regard, he announced that he has sponsored a bill that seeks to evaluate the management of the National Prosecutor in the middle of his term, where, in addition, his accounts are not only unilateral, but also scrutinized by the citizenry, the National Congress, and others entities involved.
For his part, and regarding the problems that the government of President Boric has faced in order to have the necessary sponsorship from the Senate to elect the National Prosecutor, in the opinion of the socialist senator “what has been lacking, precisely, is the ability to understand and generate that basic consensus to find the right person. I believe that the ability of the Executive to generate that majority has been lacking, something has clearly failed there, and in the last nomination it is evident that too many votes were missing, so I do not think that It is a matter of political orientation, but also of profile, of characteristics for the position”.
In the next few days, the President will make his decision, and his new candidate must appear first before the Constitution Committee and then before the plenary session of the Senate, where it will finally be decided whether the Executive’s third attempt will be the final one, or whether the Public Ministry will continue to be headless, making an institutional and political crisis more complex, which could continue to cause problems for the Government and its base political forces.
