The President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, and the four living ex-presidents Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014-2018), and Sebastián Piñera (2010- 2014 and 2018-2022) have signed this Thursday a document entitled Commitment: For Democracy, alwayswhere they reflect on the 50th anniversary of the coup that put an end to the government of the socialist Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 and that began the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
The four former presidents and the current one have pointed out that “our country enjoyed for more than 140 years, almost without interruption, a democracy in continuous evolution, a stable constitutional order, and also respectable and solid republican institutions that were objects of admiration and prestige throughout the world.”
Frei, Lagos, Bachelet, Piñera and Boric have also established a commitment “on the 50th anniversary of the violent breakdown of democracy in Chile that cost the lives, dignity and freedom of so many people, Chileans and from other countries”, by They adhere, they have said, beyond their “legitimate” differences.
In their first point, the rulers called to “care for and defend democracy, respect the Constitution, the laws and the rule of law. We want to preserve and protect those civilizing principles from authoritarian threats, intolerance and contempt for the opinion of others”. They then pledged to “face the challenges of democracy with more democracy, never with less, condemn violence and encourage dialogue and the peaceful solution of differences, with citizen well-being on the horizon.”
In addition, the ex-authorities and the current president said that they will work to “make the defense and promotion of human rights a value shared by our entire political and social community, without putting any ideology before their unconditional respect.” They also agreed to “strengthen spaces for collaboration between States through a mature multilateralism that is respectful of differences, which establishes and pursues the common objectives necessary for the sustainable development of our societies.”
At the end of the text, the five signatories made a call to the political world and to society, which in recent weeks has faced a tense climate regarding the 50th anniversary of the coup: “Let us take care of memory, because it is the anchor of the democratic future that they demand our towns”.
The letter includes the living ex-presidents who were part of the Concertación, the center-left group that governed Chile after the end of the dictatorship. Also signed by Piñera, whose original coalition, Chile Vamos, rejected a joint declaration with the Executive and the rest of the political forces to condemn the 1973 coup. The distance between the traditional right and the current left-wing Administration crystallized with his rejection of attending the official act that will be held next Monday at the Palacio de La Moneda, in which other leftist leaders of the region will participate, such as Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from Mexico; Gustavo Petro, from Colombia; and Alberto Fernández, from Argentina.
Boric’s government has unsuccessfully tried to push a common letter —called Santiago Commitment— to achieve a transversal repudiation of the military uprising that put an end to the Government of Popular Unity and that launched a regime where serious human rights violations were recorded. The president himself admitted that the country is experiencing an “electric” climate due to the polarization of positions in the run-up to the commemoration.
The departure at the beginning of July of the advisor for the commemoration events, the writer Patricio Fernández, after parliamentarians from the ruling party, several from the Communist Party, and human rights groups accused him of relativizing the coup was a turning point for leaders on the right, which highlight the spirit that he intended to impregnate to date. The rift widened with the statements of President Boric himself, who publicly questioned the figure of the late former senator Sergio Onofre Jarpa, former Minister of the Interior under Pinochet and founder of Renovación Nacional, one of the formations of the traditional right.
#Boric #Chilean #presidents #sign #letter #50th #anniversary #coup #democracy