The social aid plan that the Government put on the table to face the advance of the Covid-19 in Chile has revealed the fragile unity of the right, with darts crossed into Chile Vamos. Criticisms by candidates Mario Desbordes (RN), and Joaquín Lavín (UDI), who even offered to “improve” the Executive’s proposal, were harshly replicated from Evópoli. Meanwhile, La Moneda insists that its proposals are more appropriate than those put forward so far by both presidencies.
In statements to El Mercurio, Evópoli’s presidential candidate, Ignacio Briones, questioned Lavín and Desbordes’ “strategic” alliance, noting that both “went to the court of some populist opposition, where everything is insufficient and any amount and form of spending is justified in electoral logic.”
The former finance minister has focused above all his criticism on Lavín’s proposal to allow people to withdraw the funds they have in Cesantía Insurance. In his view, these “creative proposals to empty the cesantía fund, I find frankly incredible at a time when cessanty is the main problem. What future look is that that some presidentials have?” said Wednesday, in an interview with CNN Chile.
The senator of Evópoli Felipe Kast, who wrote a letter published by El Mercurio to question Lavín’s proposal, joined his claim more strongly.
Kast, who in the previous weeks already installed doubt about Lavín’s triumphal ability in an election, accused the building of “taking the option of making politics from opposition to the Government, with the aim of pleasing the morning and tuiters, without being consistent with their own convictions and objective facts.”
“Candidates are candidates, we have to be responsible”
In La Moneda, they also closed behind this proposal to withdraw funds from Cesantía Insurance, raised by Lavín. In Radio Universo, the Minister of the Segpres, Juan José Ossa, argued that “we are clear that today what is required is state aid for people”, adding that “our package of measures and those that may come in the future are the appropriate way to go to the aid of families. We believe that savings have to be taken care of for pension reform or God forbid there is greater basketry.” In other words, they have no regard for the proposal of the edil.
Ossa further reiterated that “candidates are candidates, we have to be responsible, and I believe that presidential candidates should value our way of seeing this, because nothing is easier for a government than to spend in the last year (…) we are interested in being the one who rules next year, despite having gone to the aid of families, so are fiscal coffers as healthy as possible especially if the pandemic or effects of it continue.”
