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“As I pointed out to you in the meeting last Wednesday, if our party ultimately has the possibility of competing for the mayoralty of Ñuñoa in the April elections, we must agree in the National Council who will assume this challenge, and in any case I I had any objection or objection to your name, but it seemed to me that said decision should be the result of a shared analysis in order to recover said municipality from the hands of the right after so many years ”. This is an excerpt from a letter the DC helmsman sent you this morning, Fuad chahin, to the president of the communal union of the neighborhood councils of Ñuñoa, Alejandro Jimenez, who until now was the letter that had prioritized the community as a possible candidate for mayor of that commune.
The letter comes just after the Christian Democratic leader publicly stated his availability to compete for the building seat, opening a conflict within his party and with the rest of the center-left.. Chahin’s statements generated annoyance among the opposition representatives in that area, who were working on a conventional primary with letters from the Broad Front to the DC. In fact, the PS had already endorsed as its candidate for councilor Paula mendoza, while the PPD had done the same with Patricia Hidalgo, and RD with Emilia Rios.
“At that time I reiterated that I am not seeking to be a candidate for mayor in any commune and that my first priority is to try to continue leading the party, but that I fully understand what is at stake in the elections next April and, therefore, , I will never subtract myself from risking the political capital that I may have, in pursuit of a collective project ”, Chahin added in the text.
The availability of Chahin also occurs after another factor was known that alerted some sectors. Last Thursday, the Constituent Unit (DC, PR, PPD, PS, PRO and Ciudadanos) reached an agreement to hold conventional primaries in 85 communes, which did not include Ñuñoa, situation that it was read as a supposed “tacit agreement” in favor of the Christian Democratic leader.
“I was the only candidate prioritized by the party at the regional and communal level. Fuad Chahin’s candidacy was totally surprising. But neither has he told me that he is the candidate, he told me that he was analyzing it. If we don’t hold primaries, that would put us on the wrong foot as a coalition. It is complicated, because with this, trust is broken, which has taken a long time to build, ”Jiménez tells The Third PM.
In turn, Mendoza warns that “strictly speaking, we continue working on this December 20th primary. As long as the talks continue and the process is not closed, the primary school continues to be an alternative ”. And he adds: “The community is not going to support a process that is not validated in an open and transparent way. If Chahin wants to come, he is welcome in primary school, don’t be afraid of us ”.
Along the same lines, the PS communal today issued a statement calling on all opposition leaders to join the participatory process and not play with the “expectations” of the voters. “We call all political, community and opposition forces to hold primaries in the commune on December 20, 2020. As we have mentioned, we believe that the representatives of the citizenship can no longer be elected by party leaderships,” they stated in the document.
For her part, the PPD candidate maintains that the decision took her by “surprise”, but that she has not yet declined to apply. “It is difficult to understand what is behind this, but what I can say is that I have not gotten off, because the only thing that I have been informed is that Ñuñoa is still pending,” he says, adding that “it would not be the first time that Ñuñoa would be handed over to a party through the omission of a negotiation ”.
The same position was expressed by the deputy for that district Maya fernandez (). “It is not possible to carry out a policy of transformation with its back to the territories,” he said, while regretting “that it is intended to impose a candidacy over the political agreement that the opposition forces, in a unitary manner, had agreed in the commune of Ñuñoa ”.
Those who knew about the negotiations of the unconventional primaries pact of the Constituent Unit say that Chahin would have asked for “shielding” in that commune, what their peers in the block would not have conceded, so that area was left out of the agreement. And from the PS they add that they insisted on the need to hold primaries in Ñuñoa, while the PPD would have made its position more flexible.
Also, according to the same sources, during the conversations from the DC they had stated that Chahin would have a good chance and had shown a survey in which the name of the helmsman was measured against the rest of the contenders.
However, from the DC and other collectives of the pact they maintain that the Christian Democrats only expressed their interest in that commune, but that they never requested a shield in favor of them. They also maintain that during the negotiations they insisted that primaries be held in all areas of the country. And although they acknowledge that Ñuñoa was on the table, they affirm that in the final agreement of the Constituent Unit that commune was never negotiated “in favor of anyone.”
In addition, in the DC they point out that today they do not have any candidate in that locality and that although Chahin’s alternative is under evaluation, at the moment there is no definition in this regard. Likewise, in the community they assure that another option that would be in the helmsman’s sights would be the possibility of competing with the constitutional convention.
Despite all this, they say in the pact, the truth is that that commune – along with Santiago, Viña del Mar and 30 other areas – were “pending” and talks will resume this week.
In that sense, today Chahin assures that the DC is available to hold primaries in Ñuñoa. “The DC are not only willing, but we are asking for primaries everywhere. What the DC always raised in the negotiation was to have primaries in all the communes where there was no agreement, including Ñuñoa, but also Coyhaique, El Bosque, La Cisterna, Lo Prado, Maipú, Viña del Mar, no problem ”, he says. And add: “I say it with great force: we are going to primary schools in Ñuñoa, But we go to primary schools in El Bosque, La Cisterna, Coyhaique, Lo Prado, Huechuraba, in Viña del Mar, in Santiago. We go to all the communes, I sign it now ”.
