The mayor of Providencia and former presidential captain of the right, Evelyn Matthei went in a scaop against a reference in the sector and co-religionist in the UDI, Joaquín Lavín, after the mayor of Las Condes declares he himself “social democrat”.
Interviewed in La Segunda, Matthei even declared he himself available to launch a presidential bid, stepping up at Lavín’s option. “Yes, you know that more, one has to be true to what she believes, to what it has been, ” said the building.
On Sunday, Lavín in an interview with La Tercera cast a harsh criticism of the elite and confirmed that it is for the Apruebo and the Constituent Convention, one hundred percent elected by the public, against the position of his party, the Independent Democratic Union (UDI). But not only that, on the night he closed the day with an interview in Tolerance Zero of Chilevisión, hitting the board by declaring himself “social democrat”. Through an opinion column in El Mercurio, the mayor of The Counts today clarified his self-definition by quoting that “being centered, I am able to get out of my trench and incorporate the gaze of social democracy”
What’s on his mind?
The concept disloyed the UDI and fell rightly ill to Matthei. “What’s on your mind?” said the communal chief. “If I wanted to vote for a social democratic candidate, I would prefer Ricardo Lagos Weber over Lavín, simply because Lagos Weber has always been a social democrat and is therefore a credible person. What worries me is political zigzagging.”
In that sense, he explained that “to call oneself as a social democrat i.e. I am PPD, because there are traditions, names and concepts that have been proper to the right or the left. And social democracy has been the concept of the most modern left, from the left of the PPD; Weber Lakes, Harboe.”
Matthei added that “one cannot say anything to win a couple of points. Lavín, in the background, is disturbed that, in order to win a nomination or an election, he is willing to do anything. Even to be a social democrat when, in fact, it has never been, in exchange for being popular.”
“He lost the anchor”
The former presidential candidate added that “what worries me most is populism. This impulse to do anything to earn a couple of points (…) I don’t know if at this point Joaquin Lavín is ashamed of what has been or whether it’s basically an election strategy,” he said. “If I believed Lavín, he should go military to the PPD,” he added.
“The problem I have is that I no longer know what you believe in and where you can drag us. He lost the anchor. Abdicating to one’s own ideas, in order to gain power, affects credibility and citizen trust, which is precisely what politicians have a duty to recover,” he said.
In Matthei’s view, Lavín “changed his political domicile and what I see is that José Antonio Kast is rising as a bubble because there is an important group of people who know what social democracy means and who is unwilling to vote for a person who describes himself as a social democrat. He’s leaving a space.”
In that context, Matthei left the door open for a new presidential adventure, noting that “what worries me the most is that we plundered fed up with MPs and fed up with senators. And with this indefinition, this that one does not know what it represents and with the disaffection that is clearly producing in the right-wing sectors, one can perfectly think of something like that.”
