The Government and Chile Vamos reacted to the ultimatum of the truckers, who called for a strike across the country since Thursday if President Sebastián Piñera and Congress do not act immediately to stop the violent attacks in La Araucanía, aggravated after the attack in Collipulli where a nine-year-old girl was shot.
From La Moneda they tried to dedramatize the paralysis announced by the National Cargo Transport Confederation (CNTC), noting that “we understand that this mobilization is not against the government, but against violence”, said Minister Director Jaime Bellolio in Radio Duna.
Meanwhile from the UDI, party president Jacqueline van Rysselberghe gave her her sense of the movement, rising that “I find the truckers absolutely right (…) I don’t think it’s right for you to take care of the coercion, but I understand the reason they’re in, they’re burned by trucks, they take them out, they shot a girl.”
Truckers demand that Congress urgently process “13 laws that are resting in the Senate today” and that relate to the prevention and prosecution and sanction of crimes.” In addition, they called on other “persons and intermediate groups” to join the initiative for the “end of crime and the restoration of the rule of law”.
According to the guild, the laws that merit urgency are the modernization of Carabineros de Chile and Police Investigations, the modernization of the intelligence system, the one that modifies the Penal Code to allow the use of special techniques related to terrorist behaviors, which strengthens the control and prosecution of crimes of theft and theft of wood, that of critical infrastructure and the Law “Juan Barrios” , among others.
“Laws are sleeping in Parliament for ideological reasons”
In the view of the UDI president, “laws are effectively sleeping in Parliament for ideological reasons” and “there is some dissent around the passage of laws that must help the police and the courts in order to disarm these violent groups now it turns out that they do not want to pass the law that increases the penalties of those who attack the trucks and houses , if people have had to start from their homes because they are threatened with death,” he said on Radio Pauta.
In this context, the Government also appealed to Congress to “process the projects as quickly as possible”. Minister Bellolio stated that “there is an important part of the public that is saying that we need those legal powers,” however, he introduced a nuance in noting that “I’m not going to put a date, I don’t think it’s the mechanism.”
Bellolio stressed that there are laws “unfortunately some opposition groups in parliament have not wanted to advance and have been detained,” adding that “it seems to me that it is necessary that in the shortest term not only the Juan Barrios Law, but is also the safety of each Chilean on the route that they know they can travel anywhere in the country without fear of a group of hooded , criminals and cowards.”
Overflows: “The solution goes through political action”
On the conflict in La Araucanía, defense minister Mario Desbordes also opined, who said on Infinite Radio that “I understand the desperation of thousands of people, of truckers for example, I understand that you have to act fast. The solution is political action. The huge majority of the Mapuche people are not interested in violence and a minority has the entire region in a very complex situation. These people must be confronted with all the tools that the rule of law gives us” or that they are looking for is difficult to unravel, one goes all the way to the possibility that they are looking to cause a bigger fire.” “We need to resume talks with actors in the region,” the defense minister said.
“This is mainly a political, economic and social outlet to the vast majority of our native peoples and respects the violent ones: a cliché phrase but all the rigor of the law and that goes through the police, the persecutor who is the prosecutor’s office and the courts,” he said.
Regarding a possible intervention by the Armed Forces, the minister clarified that “the FF.AA. are not there to deal with the conflict in La Araucanía”, although he commented that “the military will defend themselves, and if they have to defend themselves and it is somewhere else low, it is part of this ge gehe’s using firearms.”
