A group of parliamentarians from the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) presented a bill on Monday to amend the Constitution and allow ambassadors to be constitutionally charged.
“In the past, to appoint an ambassador, the agreement of the Senate was required and this was intended to be able to search for people who effectively represented the true interests of our country. What we are seeing today is that cronyism has taken precedence and we have, for example, the case of the ambassador to Spain, who has repeatedly put our country to shame,” said the deputy. Juan Antonio Coloma.
He added that they want to promote policies so that the ambassadors “have to have the agreement of the Senate or be able to advance even in a constitutional accusation against an ambassador. Because if there is something that the country does not deserve, it is to have some as true activists of a sector political and not representing the interests of the country, which is the main mission that an ambassador has when acting outside our territory”.
The project was signed by Cristián Labbé, Juan Antonio Coloma, Jorge Alessandri, Cristóbal Martínez, Eduardo Cornejo, Gustavo Benavente, Felipe Donoso, Daniel Lilayu, Natalia Romero and Flor Weisse.
The initiative points out that the ambassadors should be subject to the mechanism of constitutional accusation, “especially considering that diplomatic representation is essential for the correct insertion and participation of the country in the world and, therefore, serious errors in the exercise of their functions can affect strongly the image of Chile as a serious and trustworthy country”.
In addition, the legislators detailed that the constitutional accusation would be an “effective control mechanism” that would allow the Chamber of Deputies to initiate a procedure “for serious and negligent infractions committed in the exercise of their position and, in this way, make effective the political and legal responsibilities in those cases in which the respective accusation succeeds.”
