In an intense week for the Convention, and when some constituents of the toughest sector of the right within the CC declared themselves in reflection given the results of some votes, the president of the UDI, Javier Macaya, urged to continue fighting from inside and warned that it would be a failure just to work for rejection.
In interview with Third, the parliamentarian – in a context in which the ⅔ was achieved without much difficulty among the rest of the forces – emphasized that “campaigns from the right do not work here, which generates a kind of campaign of terror regarding what is happening in Convention. What the center-right has to do is, with the greatest transparency, deliver all the information on the consequences of what is happening there, that the regulations that are being approved are going to negatively affect the lives of citizens. Because it is the citizenry that has to mobilize.”
Along these lines, he added that “working for pure rejection is only doomed to failure, because it would mean working to maintain a Constitution that Chileans voted to change (…) it would not help clear up the country’s uncertainty. The call, more than rejecting, has to be to amend the course in the Convention”.
The deputy pointed out that the current Constitution has already completed a cycle, and that in the event that the constitutional text proposal of the CC is rejected, alternatives must be on the table, where he named as examples that it be the Congress that assumes that task , or constitutional lawyers, and even said that he has considered taking up the constitutional proposal of former president Michelle Bachelet.
Regarding the state of reflection of the constituents of his sector, Macaya maintained that “there are some who would like the right to remain immediately in a trench called rejection, without much content. But that is precisely what has made this political sector fail in important elections in recent years. We have to give content to the stage we are in today”.
“Leaving something for which you were democratically elected, even when you are a minority, is something that is not within the way of acting of the constituents of Chile Vamos,” he added.
The president of the UDI urged seeking to form a third with other forces within the CC, assuring that “just the right is not enough, we must seek agreements and talks with people who reach 52 votes, which are a third of the Convention, to balance it”.
But he also attacked the left within the CC, accusing that “there is a spirit of some lefts that dominate the Convention and that they will also occupy strategic spaces in the next government, which have to do with overturning the social order and replacing it with another with disastrous results (…) Based on what has been approved so far, it seems to me that these are things that, in general terms, can put representative democracy at risk”.
He also ruled out making a self-criticism about the performance of the right in the Convention, attributing the situation of Vamos por Chile only to the fact of being a minority, in the face of criticism from other sectors of the lack of dialogue by the still ruling party.
Finally, Macaya summoned the President-elect, Gabriel Boric, to “call for rationality”. “The dialoguing Gabriel Boric, who has expressed his willingness to make gradual changes, is the one who has the most important responsibility for directing the process,” he stressed. .
