Probably the simplest but most accurate definition of what happens to the planned reform project is what Senate President Adriana Muñoz gave in an interview ” There is a dialogue of the deaf, it is very difficult to bring positions with this government. We understand at this point that the total defense of the AFP system leads to this that we are, a great distance from being able to understand each other,” the PPD mp told Radio Pauta.
Muñoz, like his colleague, Senator PS Juan Pablo Letelier, acknowledged that the bridges are for now, cut off with the Executive, who had made progress in generating agreements while the Minister of Finance was Ignacio Briones, but there was a setback to the point that negotiations are deadlocked. One of the central elements is the destination of the 6% individual quote. “We had an agreement with the senators of officialism in the Committee on Labour, there was a strong commitment in this area,” he said, “For the episode of Minister Briones’ departure from conflicts inside Chile Vamos, it is that we took a step back and what we already had agreed to has been erased with our elbows,” Letelier told Radio Cooperativa. On the same occasion, the senator recalled that the opposition’s proposal envisaged that all 6% would go to a collective fund, which, in the opinion of those who developed the initiative, would immediately increase the amount of pensions.
Here the proposal (of us) is that you’re going to have a 6% record (…) it’s going to be administered by a public bodies, but you’re going to receive it back according to your reality. It will guarantee everyone, 100% of the people who contribute (in the solidarity fund), a profit floor, equivalent to a third of the contribution that the employer made properly recorded,” Letelier said, ensuring that “the reason the government does not want to move to a social security model is because they want to keep this idea that silver is one’s.”
Indeed, depending on what has transcended, the government’s current proposal includes that the additional contribution amount be equal to an individual account and a collective fund. This decision implies a major setback in the negotiations that were advanced, even before the social outburst. But according to them transcended would have prevailed the effect on public opinion of the withdrawals approved in Congress, in which people celebrated the fact that they could have “their money”.
But this and other changes could cost Piñera the failure of the project to which all his “political capital” is betting. More than a week after he announced the scheduled reform on television, there is no progress in the Senate, an instance where the Executive entered more than 30 indications, but where he would not have the necessary support in the opposition, than the draft before if he had.
As published by La Tercera, neither Carolina Goic, nor Juan Pablo Letelier, nor deputy Gabriel Silber, would be available to build bridges in opposition. In Goic’s case, the problem would be partly a matter of form, since the government would have recognized in the Senate committee that financing the increase from 60% to 80% of the vulnerable population benefiting from the Solidarity Pillar will be financed by budget “slack.” Both Letelier and Goic expressed their annoyance at this definition considering the answer that budget problems were the cause of restricted aid during the pandemic, and particularly in the case of Goic, of the cut in funding for the Cancer Act, of which she is a promoter.
In Gabriel Silber’s case, there would be doubts as to whether the Minister of Labour with whom she is close to dialogue will remain in office for much longer. As if that were not enough, the negotiations on the project have an extra ingredient which has been added by a group of RN Members who propose that the quoters can freely choose the fate of their 6%. Something that wasn’t in the plans of either side.
Finally, another issue that the government has so far refused to return to is that planned reform is funded in part by the end of tax exemptions to certain sectors of the economy, such as construction.
