A debacle in the PPD; loss of confidence for legislative agreements; a setback for the front of the House; dissent to appoint three Supreme Court justices pending; and a new correlation of forces in Congress that makes it difficult to approve programmatic reforms. These are the main effects that are seen in the coalition of President Gabriel Boric, after the defeat of Pedro Araya (PPD) in the Senate.
After, through The counterthe former minister and member of the Political Commission of the PPD, Sergio Bitar, demanded explanations from the president of the store, Senator Jaime Quintana, for the errors committed, yesterday the recriminations against the helmsman of the party increased.
Various members of the PPD Political Commission criticized that the senator for La Araucanía “never” attended the meeting of the Political Committee in La Moneda because he was in his region, and sent Vice President Cristóbal Barra to replace him, to whom they attribute lack of experience politics to impose the party’s position. That was just one of the questions that store leaders conveyed to him through heated internal chats. He also objected to having agreed to support Pedro Araya with his vote as a candidate for the Senate table and that, at the last minute, he changed his vote to finally support his opponent Ximena Órdenes (ind-PPD). For this reason, he even received a call from former senator Guido Girardi to “remonstrate.”
Likewise, the board did not understand why Quintana had not processed the ballots with changes in the commissions, after “Araya managed to get Yasna Provoste to hand over the presidency of the Treasury to Senator Ximena Rincón.” Even the president of the Senate until yesterday, Juan Antonio Coloma (UDI), pointed out The counter that after noon on Tuesday he received a call from Quintana, telling him that Araya would be the official candidate and that he reminded his counterpart “that the PPD still had to deliver the changes to the commission ballots, but he did not do so.”
In the PPD there was also annoyance with the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, who according to the representatives of the community had vetoed the arrival of Senator Araya to the Corporation, and who even told Quintana that Ximena Órdenes was better for the Government. or Ricardo Lagos Weber, if he accepted. Therefore – they affirm in the PPD – a certain submission to La Moneda caused the Party for Democracy to be dragged into its worst internal crisis in a decade.
“The presidency of the Senate is lost to the pro-government forces. Many guilty. In the 2022 campaign, the candidates who did not want to campaign and prevented a majority. Now a political committee of @GobiernodeChile that suffers its worst setback. But it will surely remain untouchable,” Senator Fidel Espinoza (PS) said on Twitter, pointing to La Moneda’s role in the failure.
More splinters from the Senate: rebalancing of forces and appointments of judges
Since the return to democracy, the Senate’s administrative agreement that allows for the establishment of the presidency of the entity’s front office has never been broken. As explained in both sectors, with this a new political balance was established in Congress and a new geography of legislative governance that appears to be complex.
“The Senate stopped being the institution that reached agreements and the pledged word was kept, and that is the reputational damage that has been done, it is gigantic.” That was one of the main reflections that 24 hours after the worst defeat of the bloc that supports President Gabriel Boric, after the failure of the tax reform by two votes in the House, circulated like a mantra in the halls of Congress.
“I am very sorry for what happened, more than for my personal situation, because the Senate gave a sad spectacle and a historical tradition that existed in it was broken, which was that the agreements were fulfilled, that the pledged word was valid. I deeply regret that Juan Antonio Coloma ends his days as a parliamentarian with this image of a person who in the end shows that he is not capable of fulfilling the agreements from which he benefited, and the UDI ends up showing that it has always been in his DNA, as a party, betrayal and deception,” Senator Pedro Araya (PPD) briefly summarized as a reflection on what happened.
In Democratic Socialism they depict the defeat in the Senate as a bomb that exploded, but whose shock wave has not completely spread. This is because they anticipate that Tuesday’s tense debate in the chamber “will have a strong impact on certain State issues that the Upper House must resolve.”
For example, legislators explain that “there is no confidence” to reach an agreement with the right in the appointments of the Supreme Court, where three judges have to be appointed.
“I have no certainty that the right will respect tomorrow that the quota – which is from the center-left – is an effectively progressive minister. This in a year in which you have to appoint a comptroller, three Supreme Court ministers, a judicial prosecutor, among other positions. Then there is a major brand problem, because basically the Republican trust in the Senate was broken,” says an official legislator.
Loss of trust and emblematic reforms
A darker scenario is looming for the approval of the emblematic reforms promised by Boric: pension and tax reforms.
“This is a new blow to the Government’s waterline. The right will block the main reforms more strongly. The Government will not be able to fulfill its main campaign commitments,” stressed socialist senator Fidel Espinoza.
One of his peers from the PS pointed out The counter that La Moneda will have a greater difficulty regarding the priorities and urgency of the bills in the Senate: “Having the leadership in the hands of the right, that gives them ample resolution capacity. And politically everything will have to be negotiated very carefully and with a greater need for understanding. And within Democratic Socialism there will have to be a strong self-criticism of correction and order in the face of the tremendous disaster,” says a parliamentarian.
For other pro-government leaders, the new right-wing majority – in what seems like a new opposition pact – becomes dangerous to settle possible constitutional accusations against ministers.
“In 2008, Adolfo Zaldívar and Fernando Flores also left their parties (the DC and the PPD) and gave the right a majority in the Senate. Shortly afterward, the constitutional accusation against Yasna Provoste was successful, a milestone in the beginning of the country’s institutional deterioration. The fate of both on the right was very poor, far from the influence they hoped to have. They misread the right. I think Rincón and Walker make the same mistake… and they are going to end badly,” said former deputy Jorge Insunza (PPD) and member of the store’s political commission on Twitter.
The Government only began to gauge the blow they had received yesterday afternoon. The spokesperson minister, Camila Vallejo, said that what happened in the Upper House worries the Government, “because it not only accounts for and reveals the political minority that the Executive and the ruling party have in Congress (…), but because the question that one “What is done is how to generate agreements for reforms that are much more important, if the agreements are so weak.”
Wear and tear due to friction between the Senate and La Moneda
Not only was the relationship between the PPD senators resentful. Also the relations of Democratic Socialism with the DC, given the delay in agreeing to give the Finance Commission to Senator Ximena Rincón (ex-DC).
“The pro-government senators, in general, failed to intervene in the brawl between Yasna Provoste and Ximena Rincón. In this way, then, in the end the ruling party gave excuses to the right to facilitate the breaking of the agreement. And now there is a danger that the same thing will happen in the Chamber,” explains a parliamentarian.
In the Corporation they maintain that the role of the chief of staff Carolina Tohá, nor that of Álvaro Elizalde, was not well evaluated among the pro-government senators, despite the fact that the latter warned Quintana and Lagos Weber that the PPD was delaying the agreement and the change of ballots.
While criticism in Democratic Socialism begins to intensify against Minister Tohá and the Political Committee.
“Tohá, who in the kitchen pressured Quintana not to be Araya, is now speaking out in public to say that damage has been done to the Senate and that she is not going to allow it to happen (…). Yes, she was part of it,” says a legislator, alluding to the minister’s statements, where she expressed: “What happened yesterday in the Senate is extremely serious, it is unprecedented. It has never happened that, when there is a commitment, a sector benefits from the part that suits them and when it is their turn to comply, they do not do so (…). What they did yesterday is damage to the future of the country and we are not going to allow that to happen.”
Several senators expressed their discomfort with the role of the minister and the Political Committee. “In any government in the world, in any democracy, the Political Committee, after a debacle like this, must pay costs. The right took advantage of the PPD’s lack of definition, but also of the Government’s lack of commitment to help resolve this conflict last Friday,” Senator Fidel Espinoza told The counter.
“Elizalde arrived with the promise that she could resolve these things, and that she was coming, hueónto build agreements in the Senate, and all this fell apart. How could he not stop Carolina, or is it that the coordination is not going well there,” they maintain from the PPD table.