Page 17 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2021 (English)

Yasna Provoste Wins Center Left
Problems with Argentina
Presidential Primary
that organization, called the People’s List, whose members broke in as the third force within the entity, but of the nearly two months they have been working they lost 14 of their conventional. Right now, the People’s List is experiencing hours of disintegration; Rodrigo Rojas recently left, vice president of the assembly, considered a symbol of the bloc, where they think that his departure marks the end of a cycle. This person became popular in the protests in the Plaza Baquedano for showing himself with a naked torso, exhibiting the catheters of his medical treatment against cancer. “I don’t ght cancer, I ght to pay for chemo,” he wrote on posters and captions that he attached to his body on duct tape. This is without counting the embarrassing incident that led the group’s presidential candidate, Diego Ancalao, who forged signatures before the Electoral Service to meet the requirements of being accepted as a candidate. Today of that conglomerate only 13 of the 27 that were elected remain.
The Importance of the Convention and The Role of Candidates
Marta Lagos, director of Latinobarometro, said that: “It will be a revolutionary Constitution. People have not realized the implication and magnitude of the change that is coming. The symbol of Elisa Loncon as president of the Convention is not yet noticed by Chileans, but that is what is happening. That there is resistance (from public opinion) seems absolutely natural to me ”, she pointed out.
The vice-dean of the Faculty of Government of the Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD), Rodrigo Arellano, thinks the opposite of the analyst. The academic says that he sees “with a signi cant degree of concern” what happened in the Convention, given that in his opinion the conventional ones “have self-conferred attributions” that have “exceeded the limit” of their functions that are “established quite clearly. by the law”. “In the Convention we have seen that they have progressively tried to break that limit. One of those is the self- declaration, or the issue of trying to infer in the powers of the State with amnesty or pardon for the criminals of the social outbreak, “said the political analyst.
“We still do not discuss the government system, or we will have a bicameral congress, but the vice president is already announcing that his powers are beyond,” said Arellano, referring to the words of Jaime Bassa.
This, because after the suggestion approved by the Human Rights Commission of the Convention to replace the institution of Carabineros, a point that was rejected by right-wing conventionalists, parliamentarians and the Executive, the vice president of the Convention, Jaime Bassa He said that “in no case are we going to allow ourselves to be ruled” and if the new Constitution establishes the re-founding of Carabineros, “Carabineros will be re-founded.” However, the future of the country lies in the Constituent Convention and therefore, observers warn, the most important thing is to know what each candidate thinks about the reforms that are on the table. Failure to do so, as has been seen so far, could render them obsolete or impractical, before reaching the presidential seat. The reforms that include or cease to include would completely change the cultural, economic and social geography of the country. For some, everything else is accessory. For example, they wonder what the candidates say about themselves: Do they agree that we stop being a republic to transform ourselves into a plurinational
state ; How far are they willing to go in the new Constitution to truly resolve the con ict in La Araucanía ?; Would they accept to grant autonomy with economic and jurisdictional powers in the Mapuche territories? ; What is the political regime that you would like for Chile: A semi-presidentialism, more powers for Congress, elimination of the Senate?; How do you conceive the Constitutional Court?; Would they maintain constitutional preventive control as an attribution? Would you eliminate quali ed quorum laws making it possible for a simple majority to pass all laws that are to their liking? It is possible that the presidential candidates will soon carry out this exercise, but so far, they do not seem to have taken the weight of what is happening in the country.
AFS, Life Annuities and Argentina
The candidates seem to be very concerned about their respective programs and about-facing relevant issues that come up along the way, such as the fourth withdrawal of pension funds, both from AFP and Life Annuities, an issue that also entangled the Government, due to the request of the United States insurers, directed to the Government of Joe Biden to intervene in Chile. Susan Neely, president of the union that groups together rms such as Metlife, Principal and Ohio, recently sent a letter to the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, Janet Yellen, in which she expresses her concern about what is happening in the country and asks to raise the case before the Financial Stability Board and the G20. Faced with the anks opened by the claim of the North American insurers, the Government was left in an uncomfortable position, since it will be forced to defend in international instances a public policy that it never shared.
As a framework for the domestic political situation, a serious problem arose with Argentina, when Chile issued a decree in the O icial Gazette, the Nautical Charter No 8, which modi es an article that details the limits of maritime jurisdictional areas for national use. It is a space from Punta Puga (Los Lagos Region) to Diego Ramírez Islands (Magallanes and Antarctica Region), which would overlap Argentine territories. According to the information published in the O icial Gazette, the decree modi es the article that includes these areas and adds the signs of “exclusive economic zone” in addition to “the outer limit of 200 nautical miles of the Continental Shelf”, among other modi cations. In this regard, the Argentine Government indicated that this change would overlap the territorial limits between both countries, accusing that the information in this decree “does not coincide with the Treaty of Peace and Friendship concluded between both countries in 1984”. In detail, it would be the 200 nautical miles stipulated by the decree of these maritime limits of Chile, which go from the Diego Ramírez islands, south of Cape Horn, which would cause this meeting of territories. The Argentine Foreign Ministry said that Chile would be appropriating a part of the Argentine continental platform and an extensive area of the seabed and ocean, a maritime space that is part of the Common Heritage of Humanity in accordance with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
The Minister of Foreign A airs, Andrés Allamand, replied that “Nobody appropriates what belongs to him.”
Montt Latin American Magazine p17