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On two occasions and, contrary to what he said on Sunday, the president of the Board of Directors of the Electoral Service, Patricio Santamaría, confirmed this Monday that voters who are infected with Covid-19 on October 25 will not be able to vote in the plebiscite.
“If there is will, there is time,” he had said on the previous day in Mesa Central, on Channel 13, underlining that “We cannot give up looking for formulas in advance.” His words were in line with what he had raised a few days ago before the position set by the government, from where they assured that the deadlines made it impossible to implement an alternative system for those voters.
All this, in a context in which the Servel and the Ministry of Health they have been embroiled in a dispute in recent weeks over whose decision it was to make.
However, it was Santamaría who this Monday cleared up any doubts and assured on Radio Agriculture that “In the current scenario” infected people “will not be able to vote.”
“This happens in every election, always. People who suffer a heart attack, who are hospitalized or who are completely resting, unable to move, cannot vote ”he said, while blaming La Moneda for this situation.
Regarding the proposal that the agency had made to implement a vote at home, the lawyer assured that “That required legislation, and as it implies more spending, it had to be dictated by the Executive, but the government closed itself to that possibility (…) and is not going to sponsor any modification in that sense.”
The position was later ratified before Congress, after the opposition put on a table in the Committee of Interior Government of the Lower House an initiative that seeks to enable voting for Covid positive people, but also for those deprived of liberty.
“For this special moment of the plebiscite, I get the impression that it is not possible to implement it”Santamaría reiterated regarding the postal vote proposed by the motion, which, in any case, had no progress.
It was in that instance where Santamaría insisted that the impossibility of moving forward in this regard is due to the disposition of the health authority, which establishes that infected people “cannot leave their homes.” So, ruled out that the powers granted to the Servel allow it “to exempt infections from this health obligation.”
His words came to refute what was raised hours before by the spokesman for La Moneda, Jaime Bellolio, who assured that the Servel was in charge of making a final decision, given the expansion of powers that was given to guarantee a “safe plebiscite.”
“It is not up to the government to rule out an approach that corresponds to the Servel”Bellolio said.
In La Moneda there is annoyance due to the attitude adopted by Santamaría, from where they convey that he does not want to assume the costs of a responsibility that was given to him by law. Likewise, they emphasize that the organism’s leader is only in “A personal crusade” on the issue, because – they say – their vision is not shared by the other members of the board of directors. In this sense, they emphasize that in the draft health protocol proposals, it is highlighted that the recommendation of all experts is that people with Covid-19 do not vote.
The issue was also addressed this Monday by the Minister of the Interior, Víctor Pérez, who reiterated that “Generating uncertainty a few days after an electoral event does not seem responsible” and promised to send a law no later than December to establish new mechanisms for the rest of the 2021 electoral processes.
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