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For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law ”is a phrase attributed to the Mexican leader Benito Juárez. It is the perversion of the Republic: turning the law into an instrument of political persecution, occupied at its discretion against those who power considers its adversaries.
In September, seven Mapuche communities delivered a letter to the La Araucanía Intendancy party office. In it, they threatened to take over land, as part of “a process of restitution of ancestral lands, adjacent to our communities.”
The response was overwhelming. The then Minister of the Interior announced a complaint under the State Security Law (LSE) against the signatories. “No one can, through a letter or by any other means, announce that they are going to commit crimes, without having any sanction for it,” warned Víctor Pérez.
Two weeks later, eight subjects met in an office on Av. Apoquindo, in Las Condes, which, according to La Tercera, was occupied by the Rejection campaign. From there, the individuals, active participants in the Rejection marches and members of the radical group Vanguardia, arrived that night at the private home of the prosecutor Ximena Chong. They used three cars, including a Volvo, and two motorcycles, with doctored patents. While the vehicles were guarding the perimeter, the motorists delivered a letter that the prosecutor’s son received.
“Corrupt people like you have no place in our nation and (…) we will take whatever measures we deem necessary, whatever they may be, to defend our country. If you consider that this letter constitutes a serious threat to your psychological and physical integrity, then you are correct, ”the letter said. When searching the homes of the accused, the police found weapons of war: a 9-millimeter Uzi automatic submachine gun along with 17 cartridges, as well as a compressed air rifle, blank guns, helmets and bulletproof vests. “The equipment is from an organized group that was intended to intimidate and prevent the authority from fulfilling its role,” warned the director of the PDI.
The undersecretary of the Interior, on the other hand, told Coopeartiva radio that “the utensils they had were not of great importance, except for this Uzi submachine gun.” After the commotion caused by his statements, the government announced a lawsuit for the Arms Law, only against the owner of the Uzi. There was no complaint for the intimidation operation. Thus, the other seven subjects, which include car owners, kindergartens and industrial machinery companies, were released while the investigation was conducted.
For our government, a letter delivered to an office of parties, threatening to take land, is an attack against the security of the State, but a paramilitary operation against the house of a prosecutor to intimidate her is not.
Yes they are, too, more than a thousand cases. Only from the social outbreak until July 7 of this year, the government filed 1,054 complaints for LSE, at a rate of one every six hours. Among the defendants are an activist for saying, in an assembly: “We want Piñera to fall, we want this government to fall”; subjects who threw stones and paint against the monument to the heroes of Iquique in Valparaíso, and a man who threw an egg at the surrogate governor of Valparaíso.
The disparity of criteria is not exclusive to the government. Politicians from all sectors tend to look at reality with glasses differentiated according to the political color of those responsible for acts of threat or violence, being understanding with their own and implacable with opponents.
But it is the Executive that can accuse citizens, persecute them and use public force against them. When that enormous power is used arbitrarily, discriminating against people according to their political affiliation, contact networks, commune of residence or racial origin, then the government ceases to be the guarantor of the rule of law.
The discriminatory use of the LSE is just one of the alarming signs. That same logic of friends and enemies marked the brief administration of Víctor Pérez, who used his position to defend the owners of trucks that blocked routes, to dispense a certificate of innocence to a fellow religionist (“I am sure that Pablo Longueira is absolutely innocent”) , criticize Prosecutor Chong when the threats against her became known (“she lacks objectivity”) and attack the Comptroller’s Office for doing her job in investigating the Carabineros (“the Carabineros action cannot be weakened (…) the charges will be distorted ”).
In another episode, public health officials were accused by the government of denying police services. When the charges were denied, the workers demanded an apology. But, instead of rectifying, Pérez accused the injured parties of “moral superiority” and “arrogance.”
The Minister of Justice even intervened on behalf of a friend, declaring his “full confidence in Jaime Orpis” and offering “with pleasure” to testify in his favor in a corruption trial (after criticism, he decided not to testify).
With each of these acts, the government divides Chileans into friends and enemies, and fails to fulfill its duty to use its power impartially.
He moves away, step by step, from the exercise of democracy to slide down the slippery slope of autocracy. And so it degrades the law. To use the buzzword: make it a tool for partisan action.
