Former UDI minister and former president Pablo Longueira referred to the overwhelming triumph of The Apruebo and the Constitutional Convention in the Plebiscite developed on 25 October and the situation of the centre-right after these elections.
Longueira, who in his public reappearance said that he was in favor of The Apruebo, criticized, in conversation with the newspaper La Tercera, the right-wing sectors that were in favor of Rejection.
“You have to understand that Chilean society has changed a lot, and part of that change is that people today want arguments, people have opinions, and they don’t get carried away by campaigns of fear, of terror, people want to participate,” he said, adding that “here he settled in a segment of our society, which looks at the navel all day , which send chats and emails, are frightened among themselves and eventually generated a non-existent panic and a Rejection that from my point of view has no story, What is Reject?”, he said.
In that line, Longueira said that a “self-criticism” must be done. “What I have come to see in these 24 hours is a lack of brutal self-criticism. It’s not going to be simple. It has always caught my eye how the leadership on the right looks at the division on the other, but it doesn’t look at the beam in our sector. It’s not going to be easy,” he said.
“The most relevant thing for us is unity, but also the ability to host another segment. I don’t see in some sectors on the right, who think they have to immolate themselves, defending I don’t know what, if they don’t immolate defending that, they’re reneging on principle,” Longueira said, reiterating criticism of his sector, which in his view “lost the compass.”
“The center right lost its compass, how can it not offer a path other than Rejection, what is rejection? Unwilling to converse a Constitution, what are you afraid of?” he questioned.
In the final part of his conversation, he said he was “sorry” for young people in his sector who were against a new Constitution. On the elders who expressed the same stance, Longueira said that “it is always easier not to do anything, it is always easier that there is no change. So what has happened, which in general I don’t see leadership either (…) You have to have ascending, you have to have leadership, you have to drive: people want you to drive, well, nobody drives anything here.”
