translated from Spanish: Adherents and former PS militants launched the “Socialist Platform”

More than a hundred signatories publicly launched the “Socialist Platform” on Saturday, a new meeting place between militants and former militants of the Socialist Party (PS), as well as independents. The event was attended by important personalities, such as former Minister and current deputy Marcelo Díaz, the Mayor of Independence, Gonzalo Durán, the president of the La Casa Común Foundation, Fernando Atria, former Minister Germán Correa, former Undersecretary Lorena Fríes, among others. The instance also featured greetings from former House Of Deputies President Maya Fernandez, former minister and former presidential candidate Jorge Arrate, and former PS helmsman Gonzalo Martner, all signatories, but absent. The platform is born under the critical diagnosis that, as it states, “Chilean Socialism as a political current today is in a serious crisis. Its main organizational expression, the Socialist Party, is mire in a severe identity crisis; has embraced in recent years a political pragmatism that has diluted its historical principles and left-wing strength status. For many Socialists it has become a strange and unrecognizable organization in the light of its history.” Fernando Atria noted that “this is not a platform that is concerned about the PS intern. This is about returning the socialist tradition in terms of the longings and desires of citizens, which can be interpreted.” For her part, the former Undersecretary of Human Rights, Lorena Fries, added that “it is necessary to generate spaces of encounter with all those who subscribe to this idea. The socialist world has always been much broader than the Socialist Party.” Finally, Mr Marcelo Díaz said that “we have seen how in the last time the resignations of the party have been overcrowded, as a result of the PS crisis and a directive that has been blind to this crisis (…) this space allows to contain those who leave the PS but who do not stop feeling socialist.”

Original source in Spanish