Santiago. Yesterday the right rejected the fiscal pact proposed by President Gabriel Boric to raise 8 billion dollars for social spending, mixing arguments that question the technical quality of the project as they condition any negotiation to the dismissal of the Minister of Social Development, Giorgio Jackson, for his alleged responsibility in corruption cases.
Boric launched his plan the day before yesterday, five months after an attempt to raise income tax, create a tax on wealth and profits not distributed by companies failed, all of which the Executive has now given up by firm right-wing rejection. “For a fiscal pact to exist, there must be an agreement and not a unilateral imposition of another tax reform with another name. In addition, the government is not responsible for the most serious acts of corruption in recent decades in Chile,” said the leader of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Senator Javier Macaya.
“From the opposition, we point out that as long as there are no political responsibilities there will be no fiscal pact,” he added.
Meanwhile, the president of Renovación Nacional (RN), Francisco Chahuán, inquired: “How are we going to give more resources to the State if there is no traceability of public spending, we don’t know what and how it is spent and there are still no people responsible for it? of the resources delivered to foundations and non-governmental organizations?
Although some five upper-middle-rank officials have lost their positions to date, the right wing is fiercely pursuing Jackson’s departure, after it was discovered that militants of the Democratic Revolution (DR) – a party of which it is part and an integral part of the Front Amplio (FA), the coalition that championed Boric–, since 2022 they created foundations that obtained tax money after signing agreements with government bodies that direct DR militants.
The case, denounced by a regional press outlet two months ago, detonated like a bomb in the Boric presidency and in the FA, a youth coalition that rose to the political leadership of the country in little more than a decade with an acid speech about the “old politics” and the “democracy of agreements” – the pacts that for 30 years since 1990 the center-left and the right tried out and that meant just touching up the neoliberalism established by the Pinochet dictatorship -, in addition to proclaiming themselves practitioners of an ethic superior in public affairs.
Jackson, in August 2022 and being Minister Secretary General of the Presidency – the negotiator with the Legislature – stated in a virtual meeting: “our scale of values and principles is far from the generation that preceded us”, a statement that cost the president his job. unleash the fury of the leadership that led the transition to democracy. And to his misfortune, in the midst of case agreementsthe theft of 23 computers and a safe occurred –finally found by the police after what seemed to be a common robbery– at the headquarters of the ministry under his charge, generating suspicions against him.
The pressure for him to be ousted reached the Chamber of Deputies, which approved sending a letter to Boric requesting it, while the employers’ Confederation of Production and Commerce joined the petition.
On Tuesday, Boric tweeted that “those who have used public resources (as in the case of Democracia Viva) have engaged in acts of corruption. And those people must answer to justice and the government will actively collaborate in that”.
Yesterday, the Public Ministry agent confirmed that 32 foundations and corporations are being investigated and that there are 19 open cases. The national prosecutor, Ángel Valencia, explained that “transfers from regional governments to very recently formed foundations are being investigated, through contracts without guarantees or partial payments, with a mismatch between the objectives, the experience of their teams and the services they promised” .
Among the crimes investigated, he mentioned tax fraud, influence peddling, incompatible negotiations and embezzlement of at least 20 million dollars.
