A group of militants from the National Renewal (RN) accused by means of a letter that the statements of the deputy and general secretary, Diego Schalper, turned out to be a leak taken out of context and branded the action as a “punga” act. This is due to the revelation of the controversial statements made by the parliamentarian in a meeting with his group, where he stated that “the party’s task is to use Gabriel Boric’s reforms as a counterweight of force.”
During this Tuesday, Shalper’s words were leaked with which he called to atrophy the process of the constituent body and indicated that “Mr. Boric should be required to exercise his leadership within the Convention, and if not, not approve his reforms,” he stated. Third, after exposing the leak of this conversation.
Likewise, he referred to the development of the new government that will take office on March 11, for which he urged that RN, “more than ever, has to oppose everything and drop the first three days where the Minister of Labor (sic) of Boric and say ‘ya po, weren’t we so agile? Where are the trainings?’ Begin to atrophy ”, added the quoted media. Schalper also mentioned that the moral strength of the Convention must be removed. “How do you take away moral strength? Telling people that all popular standards initiatives will have discussed committees on average for an hour.”
Given the controversy caused by the deputy’s statements, this Thursday, a group of parliamentarians from the party published a letter in Third called “Leaks”, in which they accuse that the statements of their secretary general were taken out of context.
“‘Punga’ is a person who commits incivil acts to cause annoyance or damage to other people, especially on public roads (Dicc. Oxford Languages)”, the text begins.
He goes on to maintain that “the practice of leaking private conversations to discredit an internal adversary, regardless of the damage to the party itself, is a ‘punga’ custom, associated with a certain type of person and way of doing politics, which is not exclusive of our sector, although it seems that we have the best exponents of the ‘punguerío’, which has contributed so much to the discredit of politics”.
“The filtering of certain expressions – out of context – used by our general secretary, Diego Schalper, in a meeting with parliamentarians, conventionalists and party leaders, to address the worrying course of the constituent process, is a characteristic act of sectors more interested in own agendas than in the role of National Renewal and the destiny of Chile”, they added.
“RN will do its best to support our constituents so that the resulting constitutional text is reasonably appropriate; and if this is not the case, we will resolve collectively and unitarily the corresponding position for the good of Chile. Faced with the incoming government, whose success or failure is closely linked to the constituent process, we will act in the same spirit”, they assured in the letter.
The letter was signed by Karin Luck, Diego Paulsen, Miguel Mellado, Sebastián Torrealba, René Manuel García, Leopoldo Pérez, Miguel Becker, Juan Carlos Beltrán, José Miguel Castro and Luis Pardo.
Despite this, the member of the RN Political Commission Víctor Blanco distanced himself from Schalper’s statements in another letter published in the same medium and assured that, in his opinion, it is “imperative to show that that expression does not transcend in any case what institutional”, since in the words of the parliamentarian there was no majority spirit on that occasion that would make them “think that RN postulates these ideas and forms”.
“Quite the contrary, we have contributed to the history of Chile as a party of dialogue, agreements and a deep affection for democracy. In this very important period for the country, I have no doubt that we will not do anything other than act accordingly with that history, ”he said.
“The spirit that must prevail in Renovación Nacional must be the opposite of what was expressed by the general secretary: we have to collaborate so that things go well, propose, seek great agreements and also oppose initiatives that seem bad for the country; this, both with the incoming government and with the Convention,” he continued.
To conclude, Blanco stated that as a community they must leave the “permanent rejection of everything and numbers as the fundamental basis of our story, and move on to the logic of proposals, ideas and dreams for the Chile that we want in the center right, and clearly in RN”.
