The tense day of registration of candidacies

A day of tension, last minute negotiations and unexpected divisions. This is how the parties lived yesterday, after the deadline for the registration of candidates for the elections of councilors, mayors, regional and conventional constituent governors of April 11 expired.

What was cataloged as the “takeoff” of the electoral race, also revealed the divisions within the different sectors, in addition to consolidating the forces and pacts in the face of the crucial elections.

And despite the fact that for weeks the communities carried out intense negotiations to reach agreements, it was not until last night that the last knots were resolved.

Many of those last minute negotiations – those that could be made official until 00:00 and which according to some parties lasted until 03:00 – had to do with the requirements considered by the election of the members of the constituent body – the one that the President announced yesterday Sebastián Piñera, who will work in the Pereira Palace, among them, gender parity, seats reserved for indigenous people and the minimum number of disabled candidates.

In the center-left, on the other hand, the prediction was fulfilled and they ended up being divided into four lists. That situation, they say in the sector, could cause the opposition not to achieve the 2/3 of the constituent body and that the sectors of the Rejection remain “over-represented”.

Thus, the first to arrive at the Electoral Service offices – around eight in the morning – were the helmsmen of the PPD, Heraldo Muñoz; from DC, Fuad Chahin; from the PS, Álvaro Elizalde; from the PR, Carlos Maldonado; from the PRO, Camilo Lagos; of Citizens, María Ignacia Gómez; and from the PL, Luis Felipe Ramos, to register the “Approval List”, a pact for the convention under the wing of the Constituent Unit and “New Deal”, the reference that the liberals made up with the deputies who resigned from the DR.

However, after the registration, the collectives of that pact went to the headquarters of the PS to continue the tense negotiation. As explained from that sector, until the closing of this edition, the helmsmen and general secretaries of the bloc were looking for a formula to “match” the quotas with the parity requirements in about four districts. But the biggest knot for the conglomerate would be in the municipal negotiation.

The negotiations to achieve a municipal pact between the collectivities of the Constituent Unit were the ones that most irritated spirits within that bloc. The talks were locked after the PS and the DC did not give in their aspirations in Quinta Normal, where the Socialists imposed the candidacy of their vice president, Karina Delfino and the DC that of councilor Francisco Duarte.

However, the negotiations by Quinta Normal – today led by Carmen Gloria Fernández (DC) – did not reach port and the Constituent Unit ended up broken into two pacts: one between the PS, PPD and PR, and another between the DC, the PRO and Citizens.

The fracture sharpened the tensions between the phalanx and the socialists, from which they transmitted that they were not willing to support a “questioned” candidate such as the one that the DC sought to promote. From the party led by Chahin, meanwhile, they accused the PS of having opposed settling a unitary letter via primaries and warned that this would have serious political consequences.

In the end, there was a breakdown and both sides announced the registration of candidates in the same communes, where competition is visible.

Meanwhile, the Frente Amplio, Chile Digno and Dignidad Now (PH, Equality and others) collectives made official the list “I Approve Dignity”, although they came with a surprise that further sharpened the division of the sector: the pact defined not to include to the PH on that list, forcing that store to register a third payroll. Later, the Green Ecologist Party made the fourth list of the sector official.

The independent candidates close to the center-left also left their roles in the Servel yesterday, increasing even more the dispersion of forces in the opposition in some districts.

In Chile Vamos, for its part, relations within the coalition were already tense after the resistance of some sectors to include the Republican Party of José Antonio Kast.

However, it was not that point that unexpectedly stressed the ruling party. During the morning, while the presidents of RN, the UDI, Evópoli and the Republican Party came to sign their pact (Let’s go through Chile) for the election of conventional, the PRI was absent.

In that community they were upset that they had not been given spaces for their letters, a situation that finally led them not to sign the payroll.

The issue was one of the points taken in the final negotiations in the ruling party, who ended up reaching an agreement in which PRI candidates were included in some districts.

In addition, in the sector they delayed in unlocking the municipal election. One of the knots for the coalition was the replacement of the mayor of Las Condes, Joaquín Lavín. And although Evópoli and RN managed to get that quota, it remained in the hands of Daniela Peñaloza.

It was the president of the Democratic Revolution, Catalina Pérez, who yesterday put an end to months of mystery surrounding the future of the former president of the Frente Amplio, Beatriz Sánchez. The journalist, finally, chose to register on the block list for the constitutional convention for the 12th district, thus discarding a new adventure to La Moneda. Sánchez’s decision leaves the conglomerate with a complex presidential void ahead of the November elections.

Several days before the deadline for registering the candidacies for the convention expired, the Christian Democrats and the Broad Front were the protagonists of intense negotiations for a pact by omission in some emblematic communes. As of press time, those efforts had not yet had a definitive result. Among the communes that were being negotiated were, among others, Ñuñoa, Peñalolén, Maipú, Quilicura, Coquimbo and Lampa.

With annoyance they found themselves yesterday morning in the PRI, a party led by Rodrigo Caramori, since they felt that the rest of the Chile Vamos parties were not including a large part of their candidates for the convention. In fact, the community did not sign the agreement for those elections and in the afternoon they threatened to register their own list of candidates. However, after several negotiations they agreed to include independent letters in quotas of their allied parties.

A series of messages circulated yesterday in RN’s WhatsApp chats in which several leaders accused the board of privileging relatives of parliamentarians as candidates for the convention. This, claiming that the letters that the metropolitan council had chosen were not being respected. “We have seen how some conventional candidates have been arbitrarily replaced, a completely reprehensible situation,” said Deputy Tomás Fuentes in a letter he sent to the helmsman, Rafael Prohens.

It was the weekend when the PC and the FA notified the PH that they could not include them on their list to the convention. The leaders warned that the complaint for sexual violence against the deputy Florcita Alarcón – who resigned from the PH – could bring costs. Thus, the humanists had to register a pact alone and negotiated for their independent candidates to compete in the Equality quotas. Meanwhile, yesterday the candidate for governor for the RM and Jiles’ partner, Pablo Maltés, registered.