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Those who say they have a good memory in this trip-prone game recall the following. That the two began to hit it off towards the middle or end of the last decade, when Mario Desbordes Jimenez He was thinking of packing his things and leaving for Ecuador because his finances had almost collapsed when his photographic development store business succumbed to digital sensors; There she has uncles, cousins and cousins and she wanted to start over. He was active in National Renovation since 2000 -he had already left the Carabineros- and participated in territorial tasks and in the party’s professional groups.
Carlos Larrain Peña had signed the file on 2003, debuting as RN treasurer. Three years later (2006) he assumed the presidency after Sergio Diez, when Sebastián Piñera had just lost the second presidential round with Michelle Bachelet and was already preparing for the decisive assault of 2009. His secretary general was Lily perez -then they would feud without remedy-, which opened a door for Desbordes in the bus. The two protagonists of this note were at the ends of Antonio Varas’ chain of command when they met, they hit it off and the then political chief took confidence in him. It also helped him and would have offered him some kind of help, some recall. Others say that did not materialize.
Anyway, Desbordes did not go to live in Ecuador. She stayed and put tokens to a political career in the party that took off in the shadow of Larraín, which lasted for some years and which faded throughout a plot in which the current Minister Segpres also appears. Christian Monckeberg, and that ended up breaking until today, without return, at the end of last year. The three are fighting the fundamental struggle to hurry to December or postpone to 2021 the internal elections of RN, and that it would be settled tomorrow in a telematic General Council in which the typical hall councils that end up defining these assemblies will not exist.
This umpteenth fight indoors in party history has this time Larraín and some of his people in the belief that Desbordes seeks to buy time to resign next year to the Ministry of Defense and return to control RN; He has not been deprived of an opinion or of intervening in the internal process from his position. Neither has Monckeberg – allied with him, has devoted himself to calls and meetings – whose wife, the deputy Paulina Nunez, is the candidate of the Chief of Defense to succeed Rafael Prohens. The former Magellan leader, meanwhile, runs here allied with the chancellor and former official spokesman of the “Rejection”, Andres Allamand, who has publicly remained on the sidelines. Although La Moneda does not say anything about this brawl, it has three of its ministers very committed to it.
The substance of this conflict is pristine: whoever controls RN in the next period will control the candidacies for women parliamentarians, but above all for those of conventional delegates and the helm of the content to be defended from a possible future Constitution. Larraín is most interested in this, he considers it more crucial than the presidential swamp where his party has no candidate.
Many trace the roots of this struggle between Larraín and Desbordes, and the breakdown of the alliance between the two, around the right-left pact of November 15 that opened the way to the plebiscite set for exactly one more month. The former president RN considers until today that his former disciple betrayed when negotiating with his adversaries and pushing for the agreement that threatens to bury the Constitution of 1980, a milestone that he describes as capitulation. He also believes that, if he re-leads the party, the minister could agree with sectors of the opposition. Desbordes knows that he considers him a traitor. But in this plot there are some more nooks and crannies.
They have heard Larraín reflect on how it is possible that Desbordes has allied himself “with the left” if he was a Pinochetist when he met him. That is true: the minister has not denied, at least in his own heart, his support for the 1973 Military Coup. In 2018 he braided on Twitter with another user of that social network in a bitter Sunday debate on human rights, arguing that a colleague of his in the Carabineros had been assassinated by the FPMR. The exchange escalated, until he posted a “Make yourself seen” back. What your former ally thinks about “11” is well known.
That may have helped them get along, they believe in the party. Larraín is Catholic and conservative; Overflows, Mason and Catholic, but there they do not remember that it was a problem. Carlos considered him correct and efficient. When Piñera won the Presidency in 2010, Mario – who had worked in his campaign – assumed as Undersecretary of Investigations, and when he left that same year he left office, the then RN leader signed him as his secretary general., that is, like his right arm.
Larraín’s confidence meant that he began to delegate responsibilities to him. He gave him a large part or all (depending on who remembers) of the 2012 municipal campaign negotiation, which ended in disaster for Piñera and the right wing, anticipating Bachelet’s return to Palacio. But RN was not overwhelmed by the UDI. He also accompanied the party boss in his attempt to negotiate with the DC a reform to the binominal electoral system, where – he recalls one version – he made contact with the opposition.
In a match that has always surfed between his conservative and liberal souls, Desbordes asked his boss to give him square footage of maneuvering. As the second in command, he received in RN Luis Larrain Stieb when the government and the right were entangled in the Common Living Agreement, which was resisted by those who saw it as a disguised legalization of gay marriage. He also received Rolando Jimenez, historical leader of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh). In RN, some say that this was only possible because Larraín asked Desbordes to let him know what day the visits were going to go so that he was not present.
At the end of Carlos’ eight years in command, Mario was elected with the first majority in the Political Commission. So far, so good. But when the leader thought about his succession (in 2014 he left the presidency), the problems began, because The one who claimed the throne was Monckeberg, and he and Larraín simply don’t understand each other. In RN they remember that the boss He encouraged Desbordes to compete with his rival. Instead of that, the current ministers of Defense and Segpres agreed.
The agreement resulted in Monckeberg -who had been arming the opposition to Carlos for some time- running for the presidency and Desbordes as his secretary general, and that would have been enough to get Larraín out of his boxes. They say that the then president threatened to raise another list, that in that case he was not going to support him, the party became a boiler and according to one version That was when the friendship and the alliance broke down: both got involved in very tough discussions that they tried to keep private (Larraín had already broken ties with Lily Pérez and with her liberal lot that emigrated to found Amplitud). Today’s Defense Minister took note: his boss had lost control of RN.
Monckeberg won the presidency in 2014, sweeping the list of Magellan Álvaro Contreras Utrobicic. He took office with a table in which Desbordes held office: he was the only survivor of the Larraín administration. His friends insist that That process was the one that broke his relationship with his then boss without return, and that what came after 18 / O and 15 / N was only made public and worsened. With Monckeberg they extended the pact that had left them in command of a program that they designed together, and that accumulated milestones that could only upset Larraín.
One was the change to the declaration of principles of RN (2014), which deleted the following paragraph: “Aware of the process of political and social decomposition that the Chilean democratic regime has experienced in recent decades, whose Totalitarian derivation made the military pronouncement of 1973 inescapable“National Renovation intends to give the new political system the rectitude, seriousness and efficiency necessary to avoid the empire of demagoguery and the return of the totalitarian threat.”
Another episode that the Desbordes and Monckeberg side know – or at least assume – that Larraín never forgave them was when they vigorously promoted state financing for political parties, which put an end to private financing. Monckeberg won a second term in 2016, and when two years later, in 2018, Piñera returned to La Moneda and signed him as Minister of Housing, Desbordes was left with the party’s presidency.
Some close to Larraín say that it was then that he finally realized that his former disciple and his internal adversary had risked it. Some told him, after the 15 / N, how was it possible that he had let him go so far in the game. When Desbordes championed the agreement that allowed the plebiscite, and later with the “Approve”, Larraín was even more upset, if possible. “I do not understand how a president of a right-wing party agrees with the Frente Amplio and the unspeakable Communist Party in bringing down the Constitution,” he said in January.
In February it followed; Desbordes told him back that “his speech is painful” and that “he is uncomfortable with my presidency because of the dialogue, because of the debate.” In June of this year, Larraín removed the muffler from the barrel and simply blurted out that: “No, I would not vote for Mario Desbordes in the next internal election. I did it last time, but this time I wouldn’t. “
Why say when the still deputy “opened the door” to support the withdrawal of 10% pensions, which ended up being voted in favor by him and several of his deputies. At that time, Larraín wrote him messages showing his attitude, while Allamand confronted him in public; the two had already clashed more than once during the November constituent negotiations. However, Larraín thought at the time that Piñera had erred half to half by encasing himself in the rejection of 10% and that he should have been more flexible and open to 6% with the opposition.
The rest is known history. There is the collection of interviews and phrases in which Larraín and Desbordes have said almost everything. Tomorrow, in the General Council, both will measure forces, although the protagonists are others.
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