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When the Government Spokesperson, Jaime Bellolio, was consulted about the continuity of the General Director of the Police, Mario Rozas, in an interview TELEVISION Sunday night, he noted that “each of us is always under review.” A phrase interpreted as the clearest signal at that point that the Government would not be willing to immolate itself again together with the figure of the highest authority of the uniformed police, unlike what has been done since the social outbreak until now. The determination of La Moneda to strictly support the Minister of the Interior, Víctor Pérez, left Rozas out in the open, who, although initially useful for the Executive, today turned into a headache of proportions.
And it is that in a complex month of its own due to the plebiscite of the 25th and the first anniversary of the social outbreak, what happened on Friday at the end of the afternoon, within the framework of a demonstration in Plaza Italia – a 16-year-old teenager in the bed of the Mapocho river after being pushed by a member of the Carabineros Special Forces -, forced the Government to reorder priorities and calculate each signal to the millimeter to try to prevent the tense ambient temperature from escalating.
Nothing is casual or free these days in the Palace, and less in this case. Minister Pérez was asked about the possible departure of the boss from the uniformed institution and his first answer was that “by pointing the finger at another we will not overcome this difficulty”, a play on words with which he avoided talking about endorsements and trust. After the words of the spokesman Bellolio on Sunday night, yesterday afternoon there was a private meeting between Pérez and General Rozas in La Moneda, just three days after the unfortunate events of the Pío Nono Bridge.
Once the meeting, which lasted only half an hour, was over, the general director quietly left for Morandé 80, there was no joint press point, no public statements of any kind, not even an official version of the meeting and, minutes later, the President Sebastián Piñera crossed from his office directly to the Los Canelos patio, where the Interior offices are located.
For La Moneda, the situation in Rozas has become delicate and complicated, even more so after it became known that the Public Ministry formalized nine other police officers for the crime of concealment, which would have led to the government being considered other types of determinations, such as deciding who should pay the political cost if this episode becomes unsustainable. And it is that, in parallel to the public pressure for the departure of the boss of the uniformed police, what happened reactivated the constitutional accusation against the head of the Interior portfolio in a parallel lane.
Given this fact, in the political committee yesterday morning in La Moneda it was decided to support “strictly” Pérez’s management in the Interior, through the deployment of leaders and parliamentarians from Chile. We are going to politically shield his figure, to whom The opposition has several accounts receivable in the little more than two months in the Government. In addition, in the meeting between the political ministers with President Piñera the situation of Rozas was also discussed, but according to some of those present it was only in general terms, although a government official made it clear that, if in a dilemma like this one decides to explicitly endorse one and not the other, “there are not many possible readings.”
From Chile Vamos they have not given space to the questions to their Minister of the Interior, giving an account of the unity with which they are working in this case and on a par with the Government. And although several question the ability of the opposition to articulate to bring the accusation against Pérez to a successful conclusion in Congress, some alarms were set off when yesterday the RN deputy, Miguel Mellado, publicly questioned the minister’s management and said that He was willing to vote in favor of the libel, if it included a chapter on the Region of La Araucanía.
The worst moment
Although the Government has not effectively immolated itself to shield General Rozas, in La Moneda they are very concerned about the moment when this new crisis will break out. They recognized that the ghost of the threat of a sit-down strike from the Carabineros is still present, which according to palace sources was hours away from taking place last year at the worst moments of the social outbreak. The possibility that this situation will be repeated or that it actually happens, is what has the palace tenants in their heads trying to find a way out that does not end up turning into a boomerang.
For some, the beheading of the Carabineros as a political signal would bring as an immediate effect the reduction of public pressure in the street and of the constitutional accusation, but that option – they added – is still subject to the unresolved dilemma that there is no one who can replace the general Rozas right now. In the palace they recalled that the beheading of more than 30 generals, once this Government was assumed and added to the call for the retirement of the former General Director, Hermes Soto, in the framework of the Catrillanca case, caused many of the uniformed who were not yet prepared to agree to a promotion in command “not ideal”, which in part would be one of the reasons for the poor state of the institution.
Rozas’s situation is not easy at all, since the responsibility of the command that corresponds to him in the case of the Pio Nono Bridge, also weighs on him the numerous reports of international entities such as the UN or Amnesty International, which denounced the violation of the human rights on the part of the police during the social outbreak, to which is added the nearly three hundred citizens who ended up with eye damage and hundreds of complaints for different types of crime.
The executive director of the Institute for Society Studies, Claudio Alvarado, pointed out that “obviously the questioning of the Carabineros and the Government in this matter puts him in a very delicate situation, but it seems that his future depends above all on himself. Since Pérez took office, he has been empowered, as they say today, beyond the criticism he has received. Their main challenge is to show that today that empowerment is translated into effective civilian control over the police and that the indispensable concern for public order means taking the carabineros crisis very seriously. If the signals and measures are adequate, he could even come out of all this well, the point is that this implies understanding that there is a very deep problem at stake, which requires measures and signals that are appropriate to the circumstances ”.
The political analyst, Mauricio Morales, added that “in this context of conflict between the citizens, the police and the Government, either Rozas is sacrificed or the Minister of the Interior is sacrificed, but the two together cannot continue in their respective positions, due to the simple reason that the presence of both together, the only thing that will generate will be a greater climate of polarization. In the country, it will also generate a much more critical stance on the part of the opposition, the presence of both can give rise to or stimulate a greater citizen mobilization and an increase in the degree of social protest ”.
The flanks of Víctor Pérez
A little over two months after being invested as Minister of the Interior, the former UDI senator has had a sweet and sour step – depending on who you ask – on his landing in La Moneda. For his closest collaborators, there is no doubt that unlike his predecessor Gonzalo Blumel, he did manage to act as a shield for President Piñera, being able to bring the most political conflicts to his office and thus removing the President from the flank, who prior to the last Ministerial adjustment was in the midst of a permanent judgment of his leadership among his own.
But there are others, several from Chile Vamos, who criticized that with only two months in office, Pérez has too many open flanks and that in a polarized and electoral environment like the one we live in, he could attack his figure before those who are believe.
Armored by the UDI, which finally managed to regain the power of the Ministry of the Interior, in the palace they affirmed that removing Víctor Pérez will be as or more complicated than having removed the former minister, Andrés Chadwick. And it is that although it does not respond to the patterns of the President’s cousin, such as his closeness and degrees of trust, the mere fact of having his party as containment, they indicated, is a guarantee of permanence, if nothing out of the ordinary happened. .
And that’s the issue. Although part of his mandate is to work to recover the right-wing electorate that the Government lost during the social outbreak, many have questioned the Minister of the Interior about his lack of sensitivity in a position in which he speaks on behalf of the Government and the President “Unlike when you represent yourself” in the Senate.
In this sense, and attributable to his personality, but also to his political configuration, it is the lack of empathy that he has shown with the latest events that occurred, where although his management and independence stand out, his toughness and unionist nature would be playing against. Instead of controlling the situation, they accused, Minister Pérez has ended up installing the problems inside the palace, a manual error for any head of the portfolio, as happened with the truckers’ strike.
One of the last sentences that brought out welts in several of the ruling party, was the answer that he gave over the weekend when asked why, when in previous demonstrations a Carabineros motorcycle was thrown into the bed of the Mapocho river, there was immediately a complaint, situation which contrasts with the actions at the time the situation of the 16-year-old was known. Pérez’s response was that “complaints, many times people say, complaints are filed, complaints are filed and that is not the way,” adding that what he believes is that they must be done “with a much greater precedent and specify clearly each one of them in an effective way to truly make a contribution “, a very unsatisfactory answer in the voice of several of their own sector.
Yesterday afternoon, the minister participated in the Senate Human Rights commission and later, coincided with Mario Rozas in the Citizen Security commission of the Chamber of Deputies. In this last instance, Pérez said about the case of the Pio Nono Bridge that “we want to be very prudent, because there have been different versions of what happened,” a speech very dissimilar to the one he presented when he was asked some time ago about the judicial situation of his friend Pablo Longueira, of whom he pointed out that “I am sure he is absolutely innocent.”
For Morales, the difference between Chadwick and the current Minister of the Interior, “is that Chadwick represented the narrowest circle of President Piñera, while Víctor Pérez represents a very important sector of the right, an issue that was already evident in three moments. When Pérez in his first address, without question, pointed out that one of his objectives was to restore the rule of law in Araucanía. Second, the deal that Víctor Pérez promoted from the Government to solve the truckers’ strike, which is a union that has its history in Chile. Third place, lack of empathy that the Government has shown with what happened recently ”.
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