“Illegal and arbitrary”: Social Convergence denounces CNTV political operation that subtracts seconds in the strip

This Friday began to broadcast the electoral strip of the candidacies that will dispute the parliamentary elections of November 21 and was not without controversy. The Social Convergence Party (CS) publicly denounced that the National Television Council (CNTV), in an “illegal” and “arbitrary” way, rejected the seconds they will have for the broadcast of their audiovisual pieces. The collectivity of the presidential candidate Gabriel Boric accused that the CNTV took away the 5 daily seconds that the Democratic Revolution (RD) gave them for the electoral strip by the deputies Diego Ibáñez, Gonzalo Winter and Gael Yeomans who in 2017 presented themselves to the election with a quota of RD. With this, Social Convergence would be left with only one second. To this is added that the state agency chaired by Carolina Cuevas (RN), former Undersecretary of Women and Gender Equity of the current government of Sebastián Piñera, objected to the issuance of the Democratic Revolution strip for Sunday, October 24, a space where the 6 seconds of Convergence were contemplated. For the elections of conventional constituents last May, the body allowed all parties to cede time to other collectivities of the pact and even to independents, as was the case of the Communist Party. For this reason, today the leaders of CS accuse a political operation of the CNTV.” The National Television Council is preventing, without indicating the reasons, that Social Convergence occupies the seconds that correspond to its elected parliamentarians before being a legal party in the strip. Changing the criteria that were already used for the last period of electoral propaganda seems to us an arbitrary, illegal decision and another extension of the right-wing campaign against Apruebo Dignidad,” said the vice president of Social Convergence Francisca Perales. Meanwhile, the head of the deputy bench Gonzalo Winter said: “We demand that the CNTV immediately clarify the reasons it had to change the criterion, arbitrarily and without prior notice, of the distribution of seconds in the strip. It is not acceptable that they intend to veto the candidates of Gabriel Boric’s party from the parliamentary strip. The illegality in which the agency is incurring seems to be a political operation against Social Convergence. The president of the CNTV, Carolina Cuevas, a militant of RN, was appointed by President Piñera and the rest of the members respond to the binominal political cuoteo”.

Original source in Spanish