Chile "We are the champions": a party against the Constitution, but with a call for unity
Plebiscite Chile says a resounding "no" to the Boric Constitution and forces a political consensus
The experiment did not last even six months, and the resounding defeat in the plebiscite closed it:
Gabriel Boric
, who arrived at La Moneda Palace in March as the president furthest to the left since Salvador Allende in the '70s, accelerated this Tuesday the social democratic reconversion of his government and
designated as his "number two" Carolina Tohá
, a woman with a long career who worked with presidents Eduardo Frei, Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet.
The change came in a context of tension: a few blocks from the Palacio de La Moneda, a student demonstration took over La Alameda, the capital's main artery, in a protest movement known as "backpacking."
Some students
set fire to a series of barricades
and the police reacted by launching water jets.
Just over a decade ago, Boric was one of the students leading the protest marches.
At the time when the new government was due to appear, the confusion was evident: everything was delayed an hour and a half.
La Moneda had announced the appointment of Nicolás Cataldo, a member of the Communist Party (PC), as Undersecretary of the Interior.
After changing the description of him on Twitter, already presenting himself in the new position, Cataldo began deleting old tweets.
Without success:
the messages in which he described the Carabineros, the Chilean Military Police, as "torturers"
, circulated throughout the country.
His transfer from the Ministry of Education to the Interior was canceled and the communists were furious.
"This is the Chilean right, anti-democratic. I imagine that if they had had a communist president they would have carried out a coup," said Boris Barrera, head of the PC parliamentary group.
The smoke from the gases launched by the police was smelled and burned in the eyes
during the ceremony of changes in seven ministries in the inner courtyard of the Palacio de La Moneda.
Some students were bellowing outside.
The staggering stumble confirms Boric's struggles to put together a solid team.
To unite the government is, in part, the work of Tohá, 57 years old.
Daughter of an Interior Minister from Allende, tortured and killed in 1974, during the dictatorship of
Augusto Pinochet
, Tohá was a deputy, minister and mayor of Santiago, as well as president of the Social Democratic Party for Democracy (PPD).
After years away from the forefront of politics, Tohá returned after the social outbreak of October 2019. Defined as "solid and pragmatic", her arrival at the Interior -which in fact functions as a vice-presidency, a position that does not contemplate the organization chart institutional Chilean- ends with Izkia Siches, Boric's campaign manager, former president of the Medical Association and who failed to gain a foothold in office despite Boric's wishes.
"Cabinet changes are always dramatic in Chile, and this one has not lacked its dose. It had to hurt and it hurts, but it is necessary.
It is one of the most politically difficult moments that I have had to face.
I do not have to hide it," Boric admitted.
"We will carry it out together. We need a new coordination of the government and I want us to strengthen the coalition together. The constitutional process is going to continue."
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