21 former constituents who were part of the Constitutional Convention formed in 2021 sent a letter to demand the minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency (Segpres), Álvaro Elizalde (PS), comply with the constitutional and regulatory obligation to archive and publish the minutes of the work of the plenary sessions and commissions of the instance.
“With surprise and astonishment we have verified that all the minutes of the work and development of the plenary sessions and commissions of the Constitutional Convention are not available on the Convention’s website, nor in the National Archive, as required by the Constitution and the General Regulations of the Constitutional Convention,” says the letter signed by former members of the Republican Party, the UDI and independents, as well as a lawyer advising said bench.
Pointing harshly at the left and the debate over the RUF, Martín Arrau, one of the signatories, current vice president of the Republican Party, assured that this record is important for Chileans, “because it is the testimony of harmful and outdated ideological proposals, but that “We continue to see in part of the more refoundational left and in proposals such as differentiation by nationality or sexual orientation in the Rules of the Use of Force.”
“If we want to learn from past experiences, the minimum is to have a proper record,” said Arrau, a member of the party founded by José Antonio Kast and former mayor of the Ñuble Region under the second government of former president Sebastián Piñera.
- On January 11, 2021, the then president, Sebastián Piñera, signed the decree that designated the Ministry of the General Secretariat of the Presidency (Segpres) as the body in charge of providing technical, administrative and financial support for the installation and operation of the Constitutional Convention, after which the Administrative Secretariat Unit was created, as a direct link between the Government and the organization.
Former constituent Alfredo Moreno, also former minister of Piñera’s two terms, stressed that Segpres had the obligation to provide this technical and administrative support, which included the obligation to have an archiving and document management system. Moreno recalled that it was a measure that was agreed upon at the time by all parties linked to the defunct Constitutional Convention, due to the importance of this “minimum” record. Furthermore, once the constituent body was concluded, there was an obligation to send this record to the National Archives, “which evidently has not been fulfilled,” he noted.
“We are asking the minister to comply with the constitutional, legal and regulatory requirements, because the least that Chileans can ask for after the constitutional farra, is that the documents, minutes, agreements and decisions that were adopted are available for the people, for academics and authorities,” added former Constanza Hubbe (UDI).
“It is not possible that, more than a year after the plebiscite of September 4, there is still no access,” said Hube, former chief of staff of former minister and former senator Ena Von Baer.
They accuse omission and concealment
To close the statement, the former conventional and former minister of the previous government, Marcela Cubillos, reiterated the importance of the record that in her opinion narrates “how a boisterous minority wanted to impose the refoundation of Chile.”
Cubillos, a former UDI militant, who today claims to be evaluating a candidacy for the Municipality of Las Condes to succeed the union activist Daniela Peñaloza, attacked the rejected text of the Constitutional Convention. He said that it was “an identity text, which divided between first- and second-category Chileans, which broke with the Chilean constitutional tradition and which was directly linked to the extreme violence experienced in our country since October 18, 2019.”
The letter has already been delivered to the Segpres of Elizalde, who until now has not acknowledged receipt, while the right-wing ex-conventionalists firmly maintain that “academic, political and citizen analyzes depend on fulfilling this constitutional and legal obligation, in order to not repeat what happened and put our democracy at risk again.”
In his opinion, the “omission” and “concealment” of the minutes of the Constitutional Convention “is unjustifiable in accordance with norms of probity and transparency.”
Word:
- Rodrigo Álvarez (UDI) – District 28
- Pablo Toloza (UDI) – District 3
- Ruth Hurtado (REP) – 22nd District
- Harry Jürgensen (RN) – Distrito 25
- Alfredo Moreno (independent, close to Chile Vamos) – District 17
- Marcela Cubillos (former UDI militant) – District 11
- Carol Bown (UDI) – District 15
- María Cecilia Ubilla (independent, close to the UDI) – District 25
- Felipe Mena (UDI) – District 24
- Claudia Castro (independent in UDI quota) – District 14
- Martín Arrau (UDI) – District 19
- Arturo Zúñiga (UDI) – District 9
- Katerine Montealegre (UDI) – District 26
- Margarita Letelier (UDI) – District 19
- Pollyana Rivera (independent in UDI quota) – District 1
- Constanza Hube (UDI) – District 11
- Eduardo Cretton (UDI) – District 22
- Jorge Arancibia (independent in UDI quota) – District 7
- Ricardo Neumann (independent in UDI quota) – District 16
- Rocío Cantuarias (independiente en cupo Evópoli) – District 20
- Diego Sepúlveda – legal advisor to the Constitutional Convention
Letter to Elizalde by El Mostrador on Scribd
