[ad_1]
Rodrigo Peñailillo will soon be back in Chile, after his departure after leaving the cabinet of former President Bachelet, who was his right hand and minister.
“From the place I come from, I know loyalty and effort,” said a very sorry Peñailillo, before the cameras, once, on May 11, 2015, his unexpected departure from the supreme power of the nation was made official.
Behind he left his role as Minister of the Interior, the controversy over the Caval case, his bad relationship with Sebastián Dávalos -son of the ex-president-, the accusations for serving as a link with SQM to finance Bachelet’s presidential campaign, without the knowledge of his boss. His relationship with her froze.
He withdrew from the political arena and worked for Flacso, until early 2017 when he took flight, without clarity on his return, to the United States.
The mission? Learn English and then do a master’s degree in Public Policy, two tips that Bachelet always repeated, as keys to keep moving forward.
Peñailillo, “Rural Galán” as Dávalos called him, disparagingly for his past in his native Cabrero and then Coronel, before arriving in Concepción where he would be a successful university leader.
He jumped to Washington on his own journey through the desert, as Allamand did before. Now, at the end of December or beginning of January, depending on the confirmation of passages, he returns home.
It will do so in the middle of a constituent process, underway. They recognized him and photographed him as he lined up in Washington to vote “Approve” and the Constitutional Convention, and ad-ports that the members for that entity be elected.
Peñailillo will land in Chile, with tasks accomplished after finishing his studies. ‘
Political future?
His close ones, consulted by BiobioChile, they assure that it does not consider running as a “constituent”. However, a parliamentary race, until now, would be the port of destination in November 2021.
Santiago or the Greater Concepción? That remains to be defined.
It could be in the capital, in the senatorial quota of Guido Guirardi, who cannot be re-appointed and if heraldo Muñoz, helmsman of the community, does not take it, in case he loses the presidential primary in June.
If the ex-chancellor is the replacement for Guirardi in the PPD, the penquista zone appears with good options, but the possibility, in that case, would be a place in the Chamber of Deputies, a kind of return to its origins. In the Bío Bío, Rodrigo Peñailillo began his political career, first as president of the Federation of Students of the UBB, where he studied Commercial Engineering, and then as governor of the province of Arauco, during the period of Ricardo Lagos.
Also, the same area where the now dissolved G-90 originated, made up of Flavio Candia -who is outside the country-, Juan Eduardo Faúndez, among others.
Ostracism and broken relationship
After leaving the Interior, Peñailillo went into absolute silence and not just political. Disappeared from the map to reinvent itself.
No contact with the press and neither with politicians, Michelle Bachelet included. Only family visits, with two trips by his mother who went to gift him to the US.
Changed your Chilean phone number, now wear an American one, that very few have it.
It sold its part of the land that it owned in conjunction with some members of the G-90 in Peñalolén, which they had acquired in 2012, with which, apparently, could finance part of his stay in the United States, where, yes, he got a job at the university where he studies.
A separate fact is how it has happened with the pandemic, where it has turned Zoom, like many in the world, into its usual tool for student and professional work and before the end of the year it handles the option of opening social networks, of preference an account on Instagram.
To the above, he adds that his two children, a 12-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, have not yet enrolled in a school. He hopes to do so when he sets foot on Chilean soil again, after three years away, without casserole, humita or empanada.
Go back home, no heavy backpack. Light suitcases, more mature, standing and without a godmother.
He wants to start over, but not from scratch, and work his way up to where possible, with a future open to new personal and political challenges.
It was no.
[ad_2]
