The President of the Republic, Gabriel Boric, referred to the statements of the Chilean ambassador to Spain, Javier Velasco, who addressed the role of the former Concertación during his governments in the last 30 years.
Velasco, who was participating in the “New Economy Forum” meeting, answered a question about the causes that led to the social outbreak in 2019.
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“An outbreak of these dimensions is not a trivial matter. For us to get there, 30 years of policies that deepened inequality were required, 30 years of a country perceiving that on a daily basis,” he answered in the instance.
As a result of this, the President was consulted about the statements, replying that “here it constantly happens that the worst possible version of a specific wedge is sought to try to put together a debate and everyone is asked for statements and I am sure that hardly anyone saw the photo in which the Spanish ambassador participated”.
Along these lines, he clarified that a member of the Iberian company Telefónica asked the ambassador if he “believed it possible that there would be a new social outbreak of the characteristics of 2019 today in Chile. To which the ambassador, in an extensive response, said that he I believed that the conditions on which the social explosion occurred had been an accumulation of policies of more than 30 years, where there was a weariness on the part of the people and that was part of what we discussed as a country for a long time in recent years. “.
“I have given a vision that things here are not black and white. Here, the 30 years were not policies that did Chile harm, nor were they the best thing that could have been done. I think we all share that. We had – and I said it yesterday in the speech-, important growth figures; we managed to successfully overcome -not totally but in a very significant way- poverty in Chile, we improved education rates, thanks to what the governments of the Concertación and also from President Piñera,” he added.
After his response, the head of state invited “those who think about this to hopefully see the entire forum, let’s discuss this with high-mindedness and not try to find the worst version of the excerpt from a wedge to fight between us. Chile has the right to review its history, Chile has the right to have an opinion about its history.”
“I have had it, by the way, other political actors also have it and I believe that this is totally legitimate and I believe that an ambassador can participate in instances of these characteristics without this being the cause of scandals,” he stated.
