The Christian Democracy (DC) elected its new leadership this Sunday in a second round in which nearly 12,000 militants participated. Around midnight, the results gave the winner to the list of the mayor of La Granja, Felipe Delpin, with 51.3% of the votes, versus those obtained by the list of deputy Joanna Pérez, who obtained 48.7% . That is, Delpin won by 300 votes difference.
“This result makes us very happy because we toured the country expressing our proposal and listening to the opinion of comrades, a proposal that seeks to refound Christian Democracy,” said Delpin.
“The challenges are that the DC, which is in a crisis, must be reborn, must be refounded, we must hold an ideological congress where we establish our concepts and modernize them, understanding that we are in the year 2022, but also a party that must have a proposal at the national level with the issues that people are interested in: access to housing, health, the minimum wage -that it reaches 500,000 pesos as soon as possible and not wait four years for workers to have it- , the environment, drought, climate change, access to water,” he added.
The difference, according to the DC, was even enough for Delpin’s list to be greeted by outgoing president Carmen Frei: “We had a day throughout the country where our militants voted and elected, in my opinion, a great list headed by Felipe Delpin. We are happy because once again the DC renews its commitment to serve the people, to be present in real problems and to help without aspiring to charges or petitions, but collaborating in what we can so that the Government of Gabriel Boric is successful for the good of so many people who trust and who have hope”, he told radio Cooperative.
“With Felipe Delpin’s directive, the Christian Democrats renew hope in our principles and our reality, but above all by serving the people,” added the former senator, who will pass the baton at the end of April.
Defeated list does not recognize Delpin’s “self-proclaimed winner”
However, and despite the recognition of the current presidency of the DC, Deputy Pérez’s list did not recognize Delpin’s victory or her “self-proclamation by List 1 as the winner of the Christian Democrats’ electoral process.”
“We want to point out very clearly that the partial result obtained in this second round of the PDC election is very narrow, so we call for waiting for the review of each of the minutes by the Supreme Court before deciding that some of them have won. from the lists,” they questioned in a statement.
“We regret that President Carmen Frei recognized the hypothetical victory of List 1 without accounting for more than 30 minutes from different districts of the country and without a sanction of the electoral act by the Supreme Court. This does not give the necessary guarantees to the electoral process, and Nor does it respect the will of more than 12,000 militants who participated in these elections throughout the country,” they added.
“In addition, we announce that we are going to present, within the statutory deadlines, challenges to the results of a group of communes in which we have become aware of serious irregularities. Such is the case of a comrade in charge of our list in Vallenar who was expelled from the polling place, and was unable to participate in the supervision of the electoral process,” they denounced.
In this sense, they warned that “the polling stations that we will challenge add up to more than 1,000 votes, which could obviously change the result of the vote. For all these reasons, we ask for responsibility and guarantees for everyone in this election and that the jurisdictional bodies determine the final result of this election.
