In the Ministry of Justice, the officials and their minister left early yesterday Monday, preparing for what they hope will be a quiet Tuesday in which the resolution of the Constitutional Court (TC) will be known regarding the request presented by Chile Vamos and the Democrats movement, seeking revoke seven of the thirteen pardons granted by President Gabriel Boric on December 28, 2022. Official sources point out that the mood in La Moneda and in the Justice portfolio is calm, because it is quite likely that the TC will point out that they acted accordingly. according to the Constitution and the laws, beyond carelessness and inappropriateness.
The ruling party expects the vote to be 5/3 in favor of the Government. The votes against would be Cristián Letelier, Miguel Ángel Fernández and José Ignacio Vásquez. The optimism lies in the fact that the other five members would vote in favor: Nancy Yáñez Fuenzalida, Daniela Marzi, Rodrigo Pica, María Pía Silva and Nelson Pozo.
The only thing that could delay knowing this favorable vote for La Moneda is that the threat of absence of Minister José Ignacio Vásquez from the Constitutional Court, known last night and that would be motivated by his annoyance with the presidency of the body, which decided to advance the date of deliberation from March 23 to today, March 21. Vásquez is very close to the former president of the court Iván Aróstica and is considered a representative of the right and related to the Republican Party. In La Moneda they consider what happened a very strange maneuver, which will only delay the deliberation until Thursday.
In circles of the courts of justice, they point out that the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, has a good arrival at the TC, especially due to his closeness to the president of the body, Nancy Yáñez, close to the Government. Despite all these favorable calculations, in La Moneda they maintain a certain nervousness awaiting the ruling, which should be known around 2:00 p.m.
Once the TC ruling is known, Minister Cordero is scheduled to explain and comment on it at a press conference at the Ministry of Justice. The decision to transfer the spokespersons in the pardon case to the Justice portfolio aims to raise the issue of La Moneda, after a complex Monday where he was installed in the Palace.
Complex
The Palace authorities had a quiet day budgeted for yesterday regarding the issue of pardons, but the only thing that was not there on Monday was calm. From early on, various authorities had to go out to explain the statement made the night before by the Undersecretary of the Interior, Manuel Monsalve (PS), in the ‘Zero Tolerance’ program, insofar as President Gabriel Boric “had in view the background of the people he was going to pardon”.
Those words were used by the press installed in La Moneda to request an explanation from the head of the General Secretariat of Government, Camila Vallejo, who in January had indicated that “if the President had had all the background information in view, the situation would have been different.”
As has been customary in the case of pardons, it was the Minister of Justice, Luis Cordero, who had to put cold cloths on and, in this sense, he came out to clarify: “The records work entirely in the administrative files, which are associated to pardons (…). All the antecedents exist entirely in the associated files and, therefore, neither its constitutionality nor its legality is compromised, which is what matters to us in view of what the Constitutional Court decides”. Minister Cordero did not say anything about the President and the possibility that he had seen the records of those pardoned, and he knew how to throw the issue out for today, Tuesday, when the ruling of the TC is known and the news is different, not the records that he had at the time. seen President Boric.
