[ad_1]
The call that Sebastian Sichel received yesterday afternoon from La Moneda, requesting his presence early today to meet with President Sebastián Piñera, was the confirmation that the itinerary that had been set for resigning the presidency of the BancoEstado would be altered and, eventually, start a presidential adventure.
Annoyed by the way the presidential race was installed within the government, President Sebastián Piñera accelerated the departure of the Executive of Defense Minister Mario Desbordes. And, consequently, also that of Sichel of BancoEstado that took place today at 2 in the afternoon, after having met with the president for two hours this morning. After that meeting the lawyer was visibly moved.
Piñera’s discomfort was not with the former Minister of Social Development, who has said internally that it is a mistake to advance the presidential race. But the now former president of BancoEstado ended up being collateral damage in the face of the president’s decision to order the house.
La Moneda’s decision did not go down well with Sichel. His relatives recognize that it was not in his plans to leave before January, that he wanted to take this month to define if there was a floor for his eventual application and he expected an explicit guarantee from the parties in Chile Vamos that they would let him compete as an independent in a primary of the sector. But today there was nothing left but to abide by the president’s decision, with whom, they say, he also spoke a couple of times a week and on good terms.
Sebastián Sichel after 25 / O: “There is a tremendous opportunity for this spirit of reform to be taken by an alliance between the center and the center-right”
One version, however, assures that this morning a joint photo with the now former defense minister was suggested to the lawyer, but that he would have declined. In the government, however, they rule out that such an idea had been suggested.
Forced to leave the Executive branch earlier than he had planned, Sichel, in addition to missing a communication milestone such as the delivery of the March Bond, is faced with the challenge of trying to raise a presidential candidacy without a political platform like the one Mario Desbordes has in RN and Joaquín Lavín and Evelyn Matthei at the UDI.
“Any forward project, I have to announce it outside of this place and not here. I am deeply grateful to the President, who did not belong to the government coalition, I ended up occupying the most important positions in the Republic, “he said at the end of this edition.
Sichel also admitted that his departure from the bank did not respond to his times. “I have to make this decision because the political times are early. They rushed the decisions of others”, He said, referring to Desbordes’s resignation. “I believe that the noblest thing for this institution is that I make my decision about future candidacies outside of this position and not within ”.
“It is a pride that someone imagines me as a candidate,” he said. “I will evaluate and analyze in your minute. I think we say a lot about which parties or politicians support us, but we say little about why we want it (to be a presidential candidate). Therefore, any decision is not going to be measured in a weight by political power, but it is going to be measured in a weight by what we can do and the moral duty that we have to assume, when we assume candidacies like these, “he said. .
Since his departure from the government is a fact, Sichel will have to define his itinerary. The challenge now – they say in the surroundings of Sichel – is put together a fundraising team and make its bet on La Moneda viable and close political agreements to compete in the Chile Vamos primary.
Businessman Juan Jose Santa Cruz, who in the past promoted the presidential adventure of Andrés Velasco and founded Ciudadanos, is the main support of the UC lawyer. In his hands today is the coordination of the Sumamos team, the platform promoted by Liberal Convergence that seeks to promote Sichel’s candidacy by attracting political forces from the center and promoting independent letters to the Constitutional Convention.
Another active supporter of Sichel are entrepreneurs Jorge Errázuriz and Rafael Guilisasti; the former director of the SII, Ricardo Escobar, the researcher at the Center for Public Studies, Sylvia Eyzaguirre and the economist and director of BancoEstado Paola assael, responsible for the Black and White survey that has favorably measured Sichel.
Although in Sichel’s environment they assure that a support collection team will now have to be formalized, in Chile Vamos they assure that this process has already started and that businessman Jorge Errázuriz has been particularly active in this challenge. According to the same source, “exploratory” conversations have been carried out with different actors, highlighting that Sichel has an institutional profile and is far from populism.
