Santiago de Chile (AFP)
The Chilean government met for the first time with the unions on Thursday to try to find a solution to the serious social crisis that has lasted for more than 40 days and is causing concern to the markets.
For the first time since the outbreak of the crisis, on October 18, members of the government of conservative President Sebastian Piñera met with representatives of the "Platform of Social Unity", a collective of social and trade union organizations in the country. origin of many calls to protest.
Among the members of the collective include the Central Unitary Workers (CUT), the most powerful union in the country, the professional organization of teachers or the collective "No + AFP" which calls for the end of the pension system privatized Chilean, a major demand of the protesters.
"We have made it very clear that we are not prepared to negotiate in the backs of people, that this is not our state of mind, that it is they (the government) who must now provide answers to proposals that have been made, "said Mario Aguilar, president of the College of Teachers, after the meeting.
While the government has already announced in October a battery of social measures to try to end the crisis, trade unions and many demonstrators are asking the government to go further, including a 50% increase in the minimum wage ( 301,000 pesos, 400 dollars) and the replacement of the system of pensions by individual capitalization, inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), by a pay-as-you-go system.
Interior Minister Gonzalo Blumel, who is the government's number one, welcomed the parties' agreement to launch a dialogue on priority issues on the social agenda, such as salaries, access to quality health services, and pensions.
At the same time, Parliament is debating several bills introduced by the government to reinforce law enforcement, such as an anti-riot law and another allowing the military to protect public infrastructure without the need to declare state of affairs. emergency.
- "Prosthesis for life" -
He also discusses a "constitutional accusation" against the former interior minister, Andrés Chadwick, the beast of protestors, who was forced to resign during the October 28 government reshuffle decided by President Piñera, in another attempt to appease the street.
A historic agreement signed by the parties on November 15 on the organization of a referendum in April to replace the Constitution inherited from the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship did not put an end to the mobilizations.
In 42 days, the protest movement left 23 dead, including five after the intervention of law enforcement, and more than 2,000 wounded. Among them, nearly 300 people were seriously affected by the shots of police bucks against protesters.
Several of these wounded gathered Thursday in front of the presidential palace of La Moneda. "Last Thursday, they took off the buckshot, I had to take my eye off and I will have to wear a prosthesis for life," Diego Jara told AFP.
After a historic mobilization on November 25, which had gathered 1.2 million people, more or less followed demonstrations continue almost daily in Santiago and in other cities of the country, which degenerate regularly in violence, fires and looting. .
"We are facing a powerful and implacable enemy who respects nothing and no one," President Piñera said on Thursday in the face of persistent unrest.
Faced with the powerlessness to control the crisis, the markets were feverish.
The Chilean currency had a new record low on Thursday, for the second day in a row, a dollar trading at the close against 828.36 pesos, a decrease of 1.1%. Since the outbreak of the crisis, the currency has depreciated by about 15%.
In an attempt to stem the drop, the central bank announced the injection of 20 billion into the economy by the end of May, after a first intervention ($ 4 billion) in mid-November on the foreign exchange market.
© 2019 AFP