the deputy Carmen Hertz (PC) addressed the recent events linked to fraud in the Army, such as the resignation of the commander in chief Ricardo Martinezthen be summoned to testify as accused by the visiting minister Romy Rutherfordby an edge of the case.
Regarding Martínez’s resignation, the communist parliamentarian told radio dna that it was “inevitable so as not to sink the Army even more, given what has happened to all the commanders in chief from Pinochet onwards, accused of various crimes of illegalities and fraud of various kinds.”
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“I think this is not an issue that has to do with the personality of the commanders in chief. I don’t think that those who have been charged with criminals by the old system, or formalized by the new system, are some sort of dishonest characters given to committing illegalities,” he added.
“I think there is a system that allows this and that degrades Chilean institutions and the Armed Forces. We aspire to a real democracy and we cannot have this kind of factual and institutional autonomy on the part of the Armed Forces in which each commander does what he wants. That organizational culture of autonomy is what needs to end”, he added.
Likewise, he pointed out that “all the defense ministers, since the transition, have been weak in exercising the political control and oversight that they should have exercised with respect to the Armed Forces. It is not possible that this mega-fraud was committed in the Army.”
“There are situations of such an anomaly that it is impossible that the minister has not been informed. If he has not been informed, it is because they simply do not take it into account,” he added.
