translated from Spanish: Gael Yeomans on Sharp’s resignation from Social Convergence: It was “a hasty decision and a mistake”

A severe blow was received by the political party in formation and still in the process of legalization Social Convergence, after one of its references, the mayor of Valparaiso Jorge Sharp, renounced his militancy along with 72 other militants, mostly close to the Mayor’s Office Ciudadana.La abrupt decision would have been made after Deputy Gabriel Boric signed the agreement by a new Constitution, which for this group involved not respecting a party decision. In this regard, during this day, the president of CS, Gael Yeomans, noted during a press conference that “It is tremendously painful for us to lose a leadership today like that of Mayor Jorge Sharp, and sincerely for me it is also painful for me, especially since I felt that we maintained and shared a common sensibility within the party.” He added that “We consider, and I particularly consider it, that the decision made by both the mayor and those who were and are part of the mayoralty, (it was) a hasty decision and a mistake, because we believe that while there are differences to our political party and they have been expressed even in the public, those differences must be answered politically, but collectively.” The parliamentarian and current chair of the Committee on Work in the Chamber of Representatives also stated that “for us decisions are collective, and we believe that in this process of debate, of crisis of representation and all the problem that we have on the streets, it cannot be that the discussion is between leaders, but that it has to be with internal democracy and with all the militants of the party”. The president of CS further referred to the agreement of a new constitution and noted that “it is a relevant advance, since for 40 years the public has not been consulted for their political opinion regarding the Constitution or any of the political aspects of which decisions are taken in this country”. However, despite the fact that we were “in fact pushing to the end to improve it,” the decision was made as a party not to sign it on specific points where they disagreed with the rest of the political forces. Yeomans also stated that as a party “We value having a blank sheet, from which we can write a new Constitution and thus have the possibility to end the Constitution of Pinochet (…) but we haven’t won anything yet. Ensuring democracy, the participation and impact of citizens in the constituent process and being able to really end the Constitution of 80′, remains an open and disputed process.” Finally, he remarked that “there must be room for improvement to ensure that we really have a new Constitution and that in its process it strongly involves citizens and social organizations. That’s why until the last moment we preferred a quorum of 3/5 in order to reduce the minority veto, and that’s why we’re going to keep fighting.”

Original source in Spanish