La Moneda a week after losing parliament

Hello good! This week politics gave no respite! For the first time since the return to democracy that the UDI does not re-elect mayor in Las Condes, after the retirement of Daniela Peñaloza and the arrival of the independent Marcela Cubillos. Meanwhile, Luis Hermosilla’s phone continues to make news, and the ruling party is sweating the bullet with a wayward and opposition Parliament.

Black outlook for La Moneda. The next few days will be key for negotiations between the Government and Congress. The prognoses for the ruling party are not good.

• And the negotiations for the municipal ones are red-hot. The curious thing is that no face from Chile Vamos seems interested in competing with Irací Hassler (PC) in Santiago. Former presidential candidate Sebastián Sichel took a survey that convinced some to support him in the mother of all battles.

Generational conflict in the Communist Party due to the Jadue case. The internal situation of said community is complicated, after the announcement of formalization by the mayor of Recoleta. Loyalty with the former presidential candidate has limits in the PC.

• And in the bonus track this week: an interview with Cristián Huepe about the fake news and how to avoid them. Furthermore, March 31 was the fatal date for authorities to deliver their Declaration of Assets and we reviewed that of Senator Fidel Espinoza. We found several million dollars. On the other hand, we tell how the conflict between the Government and the general director of Carabineros, Ricardo Yáñez, is worsening, and we identify one of President Gabriel Boric’s favorite restaurants.

And finally, I recommend you not to miss the new one newsletter from The Mostrador, Parallel universeby Andrés Gomberoff, which in its second edition talks about the possibility of having eternal youth. We invite you to sign up and follow the news from the world of science weekly.

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1

THE CURRENCY ONE WEEK FROM LOSING EVERYTHING IN PARLIAMENT

Panic. Among the pro-government parliamentarians, more than concern, there is panic over the possibility of losing the presidency of the Chamber of Deputies. Two weeks ago the ruling party lost the Senate; This week he could be left without the presidency of the Finance Commission of the Upper House and, in addition, lose that of the Lower House. In La Moneda, a person close to the President told me on Thursday that “in the scenario we have today, the presidency of the Chamber is lost.”

• Goodbye pension reform and fiscal pact. The possibility of losing the presidency of the Finance Commission, which is currently held by Senator Ricardo Lagos Weber, would be to place the tombstone on the pension reform and the fiscal pact, the two most important initiatives of the Government of President Gabriel Boric, because It is that position that sets the times and terms of the discussion. Everything depends on Felipe Kast (Evópoli) promoting censure calling for the dismissal of Lagos Weber.

“They are unleashed on the right,” a senator close to La Moneda told me. This was demonstrated in the Finance Commission when Senator Daniel Núñez (PC) left the table to comply with the agreement that placed the PPD in the presidency of the Corporation. As this agreement was not fulfilled, Núñez thought that he would keep his position, but that was not the case and Felipe Kast entered, leaving the ruling party in a minority. The composition was left with Juan Antonio Coloma (UDI), José García Ruminot (RN) and Felipe Kast (Evópoli) on the right, while José Miguel Insulza (PS) and Ricardo Lagos Weber (PPD) were on the left. With those three votes, the right can assume the presidency of the commission and paralyze the process of the pension reform and the fiscal pact.

• Pessimism in the ruling party. “I told Minister (Álvaro) Elizalde, there is a very bad climate and the key to changing this scenario depends on La Moneda and the PC,” deputy Eric Aedo (DC), who is pessimistic about the possibility, told me concerned. for the ruling party to gain control of the House table.

Democrats crossed the Rubicon. On July 24 of last year, four Democratic deputies and six pro-government deputies signed a letter of commitment that assured that the PC would preside over the Chamber and that the Democratic Party would occupy one of the vice presidencies in the period March-October 2024. On Thursday, six Democratic deputies publicly warned in the Lower House that they would not respect said agreement. The only possibility for La Moneda to keep the table is to give the People’s Party (PDG) the leadership of the Chamber and leave the PC in one of the vice presidencies, again. This would be the third time that the PC cannot assume the presidency of the table that corresponded to it.

• Lagos Weber has the key. In La Moneda they consider the presidency of the Chamber lost after the PDG ended negotiations with the Government on Thursday, and representative Joanna Pérez (Democrats) is the one who should assume said leadership. The only thing left is the presidency of the Senate Finance Commission and ensuring that Ricardo Lagos Weber remains in charge of such an important space. Lagos Weber is the only one who can achieve it, if he convinces senators Coloma and García Ruminot not to support Kast’s censure.

Where is Álvaro Elizalde. All this will be resolved on Monday the 15th, after a week of negotiations that has just begun. Several members of the cabinet minimized the responsibility of the Minister Secretary General of the Presidency, Álvaro Elizalde, in charge of relations between the Government and Parliament.

2

THE FRIENDLY SURVEY THAT PUT SEBASTIÁN SICHEL IN SANTIAGO

Let’s do a survey. When it became clear that former mayor Felipe Alessandri (RN) would not run for mayor of Santiago, three right-wing names began to circulate to compete in that municipality: RN councilor Juan Mena, former Minister of Defense Mario Desbordes (RN) and former Minister of the Interior Rodrigo Delgado (UDI). None of them were very convinced, although the most enthusiastic was Mena.

• Meeting at the Marriott. In this context, at the beginning of March, former mayor and former minister Jaime Ravinet called, from his office in the Marriott building, the former mayors of Santiago Joaquín Lavín, Raúl Alcaíno, Felipe Alessandri, Patricio Guzmán Mira, Carlos Bombal and Máximo Honorato , to propose to them to jointly pay for a survey that would deliver the photo of the candidate with the best chance of beating Irací Hassler. The polling company was Black&White, owned by economist Paola Assael, right-hand woman of former presidential candidate Sebastián Sichel.

Sichel first. Among the former mayors who participated in the meeting with Ravinet, jokes were made that, if the survey was done by Black&White, it was very likely that the winner would be Sichel. Said and done, the former presidential candidate led the poll, winning by a narrow margin over Hassler. The names of Mario Desbordes, Marcela Cubillos and the architect Iván Poduje were left behind. Two days later the Universidad del Desarrollo survey came out that confirmed Sichel in first place (31%) and things began to move.

• The loyal friend Juan José Santa Cruz. RN did a third survey with Aldo Cassinelli (DataCamp), who placed Sichel, Juan Mena and Mario Desbordes nearby. That was confirmation that Sebastián Sichel was in the minds of the people of Santiago, which led to another meeting at the Marriott, where Sichel arrived with Juan José Santa Cruz and He declared to the former mayors present that, if there was consensus, he agreed to challenge Irací Hassler for the mayoralty of Santiago.

Sebastián Sichel has not been good in campaigns. He tried twice to be a deputy, once for Christian Democracy (2000) and another for Ciudadanos (2013), the party of Andrés Velasco, former Minister of Finance of Michelle Bachelet. His most relevant political achievements were when he held several executive positions in the second Government of Sebastián Piñera. without leaving much of a mark, given the short time he was in each of those positions: executive vice president of Corfo (2018), minister of Social Development and Family (2019) and president of Banco Estado (2020). His most successful candidacy was in the Chile Vamos primaries., in which he beat Joaquín Lavín. Then, in the first presidential round, he came fourth.

• A campaign with many resources. All the surveys showed that Sichel’s victory is not guaranteed and that it will be key to collect resources to compete with Mayor Hassler. One point in favor of the former minister and former presidential candidate is that resources are not going to be scarce, taking into account how deteriorated commerce is in the area and the interest that the private sector may have in an alternative to Hassler. This weekend the National Council of RN defines whether it will hold primaries in Santiago between Sichel and Mena. Once this issue is resolved, Sebastián Sichel would be ready to lead the mother of all battles.

3

GENERATIONAL CONFLICT IN THE PC DUE TO THE JADUE CASE

The mayor’s momentum did not last long. Tuesday and Wednesday were intense for the communal chief of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue, after learning of his formalization in the Farmacias Populares case. On Tuesday he received the unrestricted support of the Communist Party (PC), spoke of an electoral maneuver, and on Wednesday he spread his theory of the Broad Front conspiracy carried out by the president of the State Defense Council (CDE), Raúl Letelier. But on Thursday “there were technical problems” that prevented him from appearing at a crowded press conference (everything indicates that there was some call for attention that prevented him from showing his face as he wanted). Party loyalty has limits.

• In recent days, three important young communist leaders have appeared criticizing Jadue. The minister spokesperson, Camila Vallejo, It was the first one. Faced with the accusations against the president of the CDE, Vallejo pointed out: “The truth is that it is not our interest to argue about it and if there are suspicions about him, well, he (Jadue) will have to take charge of that.”.
• Then came the Minister of Education, Nicolás Cataldowho showed some disdain for the words of the communal chief: “There are things that I simply do not shareor,” he said.
• To end the day on Thursday with the mayor of Santiago, Irací Hasslerwarning that the unity of the coalition is not at stake and that she does not “take responsibility for those statements.”

Generational confrontation. In contrast to the words of Vallejo, Cataldo and Hassler, the leaders who closed ranks with Mayor Jadue were the president of the PC, Lautaro Carmona, and the general secretary of the community, Bárbara Figueroa. In the midst of all this debate, some reminded me that it was the late president of the PC, Guillermo Teillier, who had promoted the new communist leadership. Carmona is considered one of the men close to the mayor of Recoleta.

• With drag on the party base. Other voices within the PC pointed out to me that a delicate issue in this entire scenario is that Jadue has a lot of influence among grassroots militants, something that has been strengthened with all the years of exposure and prominence that being mayor of Recoleta has given him.

Everything has its limit. In the party they regret that the date of Jadue’s formalization is May 29, because that means that there are almost two months of controversies and leaks left in the case. The Government has conveyed to the Communist Party that the case seems to have solid elements for the five crimes it is pursuing: unfair administration, bribery, treasury fraud, bankruptcy crime and fraud. It will be the day of Daniel Jadue’s formalization when the PC knows the details of the case and at that moment the community’s loyalty to the mayor could end.

4

THREE QUESTIONS ABOUT FAKE NEWS TO CRISTIÁN HUEPE

Cristián Huepe is an adjunct researcher at Northwestern University and the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems in Chicago. Eminence in the subject of networks and expert researcher in complex systems, he is also co-director of the Social Listening Lab UC (SoL-UC) – the social listening laboratory of the Faculty of Communications of the Catholic University –, which develops quantitative analysis of networks digital social.

• Huepe explains in this interview how and when the fake news (fake news) linked to politics on social networks and warns that, from now on, “not any news should be assumed to be true.”

-When do the fake news?
-Although fake news has always been used to control the population, for example, when rulers can control the information that appears in the media, the modern phenomenon of “fake news” appears more recently, thanks to the internet. Its recent explosion occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, in which the great degree of influence that this phenomenon can have in modern elections became evident.

-What is the element that triggered them?
-A little-known element that triggered the proliferation of fake news was the ability to monetize its use. In fact, only since the 2016 campaign did it become possible for anyone to easily earn money using Google Ads on pages that generate flow. This is how a large part of fake news began to be promoted simply to generate traffic to fake news pages, where Google ads are placed that provide a small income for each person who goes to the site. This generated a group of users who, without specific political intentions, were the ones who promoted fake news the most by trying to generate internet traffic on the sites where they placed their Google ads. This then showed how easy it was to make part of the population believe any news that coincided with their prejudices, and fake news began to be used more and more in the framework of various political operations.

-How can they be controlled or avoided?
-The most important thing to control the proliferation of fake news, at the societal level, is to avoid the complete fragmentation of the information media, that is, to prevent different groups from seeing different news without a common basis in real objective facts. If different people see news in different media that represent reality in completely different ways, it is much easier for us to live in alternative realities in which it is very easy to believe anything that matches our sources. In this way, to avoid fake news at an individual level, it is important not to assume as true any news that promotes our prejudices and instead look for alternative sources that question our habitual beliefs.

5

HALLWAY CONVERSATIONS

– Who gave Luis Hermosilla’s phone number? The lawyer Mario Vargas Cociña, known for his professional closeness with the lawyer Luis Hermosilla, presented on Thursday – without success – an appeal for protection before the Court of Appeals of Santiago to prevent the State Defense Council (CDE) from accessing his conversations and other people registered in the more than 700 thousand pages of chats that they found on the criminalist’s cell phone.

• Several people close to Hermosilla are worried, due to the information contained in the lawyer’s cell phone(s) and the big question is how they accessed the devices. According to people who know the case, it would have been his brother Juan Pablo Hermosilla – Luis Hermosilla’s defense lawyer.– the one who voluntarily handed over the cell phone(s) to justice, as a way to collaborate with the case.

– Evelyn Matthei’s programmatic team. In the last few hours, the decision of the mayor of Providencia, Evelyn Matthei, to not run for re-election for that mayor’s office was announced, in order to concentrate the next year and a half on paving her way to La Moneda.

• The decision generated concern among those close to him. One of the delicate points in this regard is what the mayor is going to do in the two years left before the presidential election.
• One of the tasks that its collaborators and the leaders of Chile Vamos are working on is to form a programmatic team that allows it to be on the political agenda by proposing ideas and public policies that improve people’s lives. The idea would be to prepare something similar to the Tantauco group, which worked with former president Sebastián Piñera on his government program. In Matthei’s circle they say that there are no names of its members and it is just an idea.
• News. Another important element is how to handle your media appearances. This is because it will not have the platform of the municipality to convene the different media and various personalities. Those who know about these issues point out that travel and establishing himself as a purposeful character will help give him visibility.
• In Evelyn Matthei’s circle they stated that it was very premature to talk about all this, that she continues to concentrate on municipal work which, as she has always said, has been the one that has generated the most satisfaction in her political career.

– The general director mobilizes his people. The case of the mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue, once again brought up the issue of whether people who are going to be formalized should abandon positions in the State and the so-called “Tohá doctrine”, which led to the departure of the former director general of the Police. of Investigations, Sergio Muñoz. This whole scenario once again fueled the discussion about the fate of the general director of the Carabineros, Ricardo Yáñez.

• In the Government they maintain that the “Toha doctrine” What it intends is for the formalized person to leave the respective institution so that he can concentrate on his defense and not use it for tasks that are private or judicial in nature.
• In this sense, It bothered La Moneda authorities that, last Tuesday, General Yáñez received at a public activity a group of uniformed former police officers who gave him a letter with the motto “Don’t let Octubrism blame the Carabineros.” The Executive indicated that this was an obvious case of using the institution for their judicial case.
• Key date for the Government is April 27, Carabinero Day, where the general director will make a speech and an announcement could be made or the decision he will make may be known before its formalization set for May 7.

– President Gabriel Boric’s usual restaurant. On Wednesday night, on Providencia Avenue, past Manuel Montt, there was a strange movement of people, among whom the President appeared walking, greeting and accepting selfies in droves, to then be accompanied by his escorts to the presidential vehicle.

• The place from which the President left is the French restaurant Normandie and he was accompanied by the Social Convergence deputy Gonzalo Winter, with whom he would have been drinking pisco sour, according to what witnesses told us.
• We learned that the Normandie is one of the usual places the President goes to and that one of the reasons why he likes that place is that there is a private area where he can share with those who accompany him without generating a lot of noise.
• They told me that there are many occasions in which the President has closed the premises along with the employees of the place.

6

AGENDA OF THE WEEK

Monday 8

• Negotiation begins for the formation of the table of the Chamber of Deputies, which will be voted on Monday, April 15.
• Finance Commission discusses fiscal pact.

Mars 9

• It should be clarified if Senator Felipe Kast presents the censure against the senator and president of the Senate Finance Commission, Ricardo Lagos Weber.
• End of the discussion of the short isapres law in the Chamber.

Wednesday 10

• Last date for registration of primaries by the municipal ones.

Friday the 12th

• The transfer of more than $93 billion from the royalty mining to 307 communities in the country.

7

LOBBY CORNER

Declaration of Patrimony of Senator Fidel Espinoza (PS). Last March 31, the deadline for Government and public department authorities to present their 2024 Declaration of Assets and Interests closed. This week we reviewed Senator Espinoza’s new declaration, which includes – among other things – a property in Puerto Montt valued at $30,529,837,703 (close to US$ 30 million) and, according to the document, owns 25% of it, which would imply $7,632,459,425 (close to US$ 7.5 million).

• The declaration contains interesting data that gives an idea of ​​the capital that the parliamentarian has. He also has seven other real estate properties that in total are valued, according to tax appraisal, at $512.730.809.
• Their investments include a deposit through the Voluntary Pension Savings (APV) mechanism for $116.379.000; savings for $31.092.000; and Mutual Funds for $439.043.070.
• In the Debt or Liability item, a consumer credit appears for $69.029.685.

8

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK: PARALLEL UNIVERSE

I end this edition with a new invitation to enter a Parallel universe, a window to the world of science. It is the new newsletter of The counterwhich we launched two weeks ago, where physicist Andrés Gomberoff takes us on a fascinating journey through the world of science.

• In this second edition, Andy tells us, among other things, about the possibilities of having eternal youth and how materials engineering is presented as a possible means to combat heat and climate change.
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And up to here our +Politics This week. If you have any comments, questions or information that you want to share, you can write to me at jmontalva@elmostrador.cl.