The vote last Monday, November 7, called to elect the new board of directors of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies, marked the definitive disintegration of the parliamentary caucus of the People’s Party (PDG), whose committee today is divided and publicly confronted . This, after Gaspar Rivas, Karen Medina, Rubén Oyarzo and Francisco Pulgar decided to distance themselves from the agreement forged between said community and Chile Vamos, giving the necessary votes to the ruling party to keep the head of the Corporation in its power.
It was this fact that triggered a larger-scale conflict within the store founded in 2019, whose nine seats in the Chamber quickly transformed it into a “hinge party”, which could be decisive in a Congress with the opposition and ruling forces. practically tied. Although at first the PDG assumed its status as an emerging and relevant actor, willing to negotiate both with the Government and with the right, its convening role in the controversial and shameful parallel discussion table on the continuity of the constituent process began, a few years ago weeks, to shed light on the transience of their networks of influence.
It should be remembered that it was the eventual fulfillment of the administrative agreement signed by the People’s Party itself with the government parties last March, which allowed the communist deputy Karol Cariola to become president of the Chamber, which began to generate resistance in a majority sector of the community led by the economist Franco Parisi, and which opened the possibility of reaching a new agreement with the opposition. After tense negotiations, almost half of its parliamentarians refused to support the candidacy of Miguel Ángel Calisto (DC), unleashing a strong confrontation between the fellow caucuses.
Precisely, this Wednesday, a lunch between the congress members of the PDG committee ended with shouts, after the expulsion of Deputy Pulgar and sanctions against Rivas, Oyarzo and Medina, who make up the so-called “wayward” group, became known. On the other hand, the accusing group, which was the one that negotiated with the right to promote a new administrative pact, is made up of the head of the caucus, Yovana Ahumada; the former candidate for the presidency of the Chamber, Víctor Pino; Roberto Arroyo, and other independents, such as Gloria Naveillán.
The departure of Francisco Pulgar caused the other deputies considered “unruly” to threaten to resign from the party, accusing that there were obvious violations of the Corporation’s regulations, which caused said group of parliamentarians to file a complaint this Wednesday for alleged adulteration of a public instrument before the Economic Crimes Brigade of the PDI Police. Noting that it is an ongoing investigation, they did not want to provide further details in this regard, but part of the accusation is related to changes in the minutes to allow regulatory changes that would justify the expulsion of Deputy Pulgar.
From the leadership of the bench of deputies and deputies of the PDG they avoided referring to said accusation, since they assure that next Monday a decision will be made in this regard at a meeting attended by the members of the committee. Recently, in addition, they released a statement in which they justified the sanctions against the “unruly” parliamentarians, accusing them of ignoring what was democratically agreed at the internal level, in which a new agreement with the right was supported, and of voting for the candidate on the list opposition Vlado Mirosevic, “which reflects that they previously agreed with the guidelines of the entire list on the left,” they added.
PDG on the brink of sunset
In this complex scenario, the PDG could be very close to its definitive and early fragmentation, with the certain risk of dissolving, considering that only in 2021 could it be legalized before the Electoral Service (Servel). Until now, the party has been led by its founder, the economist and former presidential candidate Franco Parisi, who in recent days has taken advantage of his social media platforms to criticize “rogue” deputies and threaten future sanctions and even They would ask to resign from the community. But beyond his attempts to continue influencing and continuing to cement a leadership that has obviously weakened in recent times, Parisi refuses to let go of the possibility of building a space that brings together those who do not feel represented with the traditional political sectors, for which the last facts are warned by the economist as a real threat so that his “populist right” project falls into the abyss, due to its own ideological fragility and scarce programmatic support.
It is precisely this risk that, for some analysts, equates the current critical situation of the PDG with the controversial and failed project of the so-called People’s List, which achieved unusual success in the elections of conventional constituents -driven by the popular fervor of the social explosion and the emergence of new political spaces that distanced themselves from the traditional political logic–, but a series of scandals led its members to abandon the movement, which was quickly dissolved. On the other hand, and keeping the proportions, analysts agree that the People’s Party went, in a matter of months, from being a platform empowered and legitimized by the victory of Rejection in the exit plebiscite, to being in vital risk, to because of the unforced errors of its members and the lack of depth of its political project.
But among those who seek to survive the crisis and keep the currently dissociated project standing, there is the hypothesis that both the ruling party and the opposition are exerting their influence so that the party is weakened. In fact, from the sanctioned sector there are some critical voices about the role that Chile may eventually be playing Let’s go so that the rebels are expelled from the bench, because the PDG has complicated the UDI, RN and Evópoli in results elections with the dispersion of votes and, furthermore, because if said deputies are removed from key commissions, this would facilitate the strategy of the right to censor such spaces.
In this regard, the general secretary of the community, Emilio Peña, maintained that “the left and the right need the PDG to disappear. The left has systematically attacked us since we left, and now we feel that the right is also attacking us. Now we feel that there is a lot of pressure. Obviously they need us to weaken ourselves, “he said.
But the truth is that, beyond speculation and the search for arguments to understand the critical situation of the community, from the group of “unruly” members of the PDG they are honest about the possibility that all this controversy is justified in a strategy that aims to “revenge” those who voted in favor of the ruling party and against the disposition of their caucus, in the recent election of the new board of directors of the Chamber. Waiting for the PDI investigation to progress, they announce that next Monday they could make important decisions about their continuity in the store.
In that sense, one of the sanctioned parliamentarians and who has become a problematic element for the intentions of the store committee board – which, for example, was always in favor of respecting the administrative agreement agreed with the ruling party – , the deputy Rubén Oyarzo, was honest about the complex situation that the community is going through.
“In detail, we parliamentarians believe that there was an eventual adulteration of the minutes and the regulations to make regulatory changes that would support the expulsion of Pulgar, which would not have been ratified, because they assume that they were made recently (…). This crossed the line, we are talking about a machine run, a purge, a vendetta where a circumstantial majority is taking advantage of a single majority vote to do what they want and transform the bench into an authoritarian situation,” Oyarzo said.
In the coming days, the conflict within the People’s Party will experience decisive moments, after a series of attacks, confrontations, accusations and threats among those who for some time were trying to lead a political project that sought to differentiate itself from the traditional way of doing politics, but which has fallen prey to both its own quarrels and its own fragility. With a leader like Franco Parisi, who has not been able to mobilize the actions of his bench of deputies, this emerging space has been cajoled from the beginning by the ruling and opposition parties, who understand their weaknesses and who desperately need to add allies in a divided National Congress.
Now, fragmented and on the edge of the precipice, the right-wing populist party is very close to following the path of those projects that, in the heat of a particular contingency, are offered as immediate responses, but that in the medium and long term are not capable of achieve the solidity necessary to become an influential actor.
