“Whether the Chair did well in the TC, whether the Chair did badly in the TC, the scenarios meant to the Government that he was going to do poorly.” That was the conclusion of the political and academic analyst of diego portales University (UDP), Hugo Herrera, in this Wednesday’s chapter of El Mostrador Political Week, regarding the Executive’s move to send the opposition project of the second 10% retreat to the Constitutional Court (TC).
For Herrera, “there is no political triumph when you have an institution that, beyond composition, is an institution that today operates on a basis that is questioned, because its function is to ensure that the Constitution is respected, and we can have many differences, but that the 1980 Constitution no longer functions as a legitimate symbol, that seems to be beyond doubt , and the plebiscite confirms it.”
The editor of El Mostrador, Marcela Jiménez, agreed on this point, noting that “I think it will turn out, but even if it turns out and the government’s project is approved and falls that of the Chamber of Deputies, it is still a political defeat for the Government, first because the Government did not want to withdraw 10%, second because it is late, and because all we have seen is only the chronicle of a government that has no political conduct and does not it has political management, and a government that also governs in a short-term way, for the week (…) there is no long-term look.”
On the other hand, the political analyst released a critique of Piñera, stating that the Representative “has been characterized during all this time by being late for all discussions. He was late for the (Agreement for Peace and the New Constitution) November 15. He was late for the 10% retirement because he did not submit a reform project to pension fund managers, and he was late with measures to support the middle class, and he was late for this second retirement.”
Jimenez supplemented this point by stated that “President Piñera’s strategy of resorting to the Constitutional Court is risky and complicated. While it is within its powers to do so, and while it is highly likely that the Constitutional Court could rule in favor of the President itself because the correlation of forces within the TC favors it (…) one of the great problems of the Constitutional Court, it is not a Constitutional Court, but a political court, it is cuckooed.”
