Daniel Jadue, the former Chilean mayor for whom Gustavo Petro advocated, is released from prison. Why is he a dangerous rival for Gabriel Boric?

Amid cries of “Justice and freedom for Daniel,” The former mayor of the Santiago town of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue, was released from the Captain Yavar prison, surrounded by a sea of ​​cameras and microphones from the Chilean media, who were seeking his statements, after a judge revoked his preventive detention, in the context of the case of the so-called popular pharmacies.

“I am very happy with this ruling, because it did not prove the commission of any crime or my participation in it. Now I have to prove my innocence,” Jadue said in the live broadcast on his Instagram account, after managing to escape from the crowd of followers and journalists who were waiting for him to leave.

And it is that the leader of the Communist Party, whom President Gustavo Petro defended on his social networks, when he was arrested, 3 months ago, claiming that “he was imprisoned by Pinochet’s jurisprudence”, He was granted house arrest because the court considered that there was no longer a risk that he would handle public resources, after losing his position as mayor, for being out of office for more than 45 days, and noted that Jadue, being able to leave the country, stayed in Chile to face his judicial process.

“This is news that has generated enormous joy among left-wing forces and among the popular world, because there was a lot of expectation and hope that this brutal injustice that was being committed against Daniel could be brought to an end soon, and, even though it is not a complete release from the charges of the process, the level of abuse represented by the preventive detention that had been imposed on him for almost 100 days is coming to an end,” Carlos Insunza, National Counselor of the Unitary Central of Workers of Chile and one of the men closest to Daniel Jadue, told EL TIEMPO.

The effect of Daniel Jadue’s release from prison has to do with a strengthening of the hardest positions within the Communist Party

For Insunza and the entourage of the former communist mayorJadue’s imprisonment was a response to a judicial maneuver to remove him from office, which he had held for 12 years and which had become his main platform for the presidential candidacy, which, although he lost in the 2021 primaries against the current president Gabriel Boric, remained one of his greatest political objectives and an aspiration of his followers. “It has become absolutely clear, in the conscience of the Chilean people, that this is an unfair process and they have not managed to tarnish Daniel’s prestige or his work as mayor in the slightest,” he points out.

However, Jadue’s release from prison coincides with the start of the campaign for the municipal elections that will take place at the end of October and will become a test of political and territorial power for the current government, and a thermometer for next year’s presidential race.

“I think that the effect of Daniel Jadue’s release from prison has to do with a strengthening of the hardest positions within the Communist Party, of those who had assumed, until now, a rather critical position with respect to the government. We are going to have even greater tension in relation to the positions of President Gabriel Boric and his government, especially on international issues. and in the context of another year of social unrest, failed constituent processes, and municipal elections,” Marco Moreno, director of the School of Government and Communications at the Central University of Chile, told EL TIEMPO.

Daniel Jadue versus Gabriel Boric

The release of the country’s most popular communist ex-mayor from prison fuels the internal war that his party has been engaged in throughout Gabriel Boric’s government, They have criticized him for his position on security issues and have recently distanced themselves from the president’s position on Venezuela. This has increased tension in the ruling coalition, a situation that could become more acute due to Daniel Jadue’s well-known defense of the Chavista regime, which he planned to visit last April to present his successful Popular Pharmacies program to the so-called “Ministry of Communes,” before being arrested.

His closeness to Nicolas Maduro’s government could deepen the differences between Boric’s executive, who has been the first president of the Latin American left to call it a dictatorship and the Communist Party, which has distanced itself from its position. “It is not a dictatorship, I cannot rush to define a dictatorship if I know that there is a separation of powers. Well, I don’t know if they are separated in Chile or not,” said Lautaro Carmona, president of the Communist Party of Chile, in an interview with TVN, in recent days.

But, regardless of ideological differences on national and international issues, The impact of Jadue’s release from prison on the presidential race, which he lost in the primary election to Boric three years ago, is still uncertain until his legal situation is resolved.

“If his legal situation is resolved in a few months, Jadue will probably be encouraged to run for a new presidential primary. Therefore, we cannot rule it out a priori,” says Moreno. A scenario that would open the possibility of the political return of one of the most popular figures in the Communist Party, at a time when the Chilean left lacks strong faces to confront the opposition in the 2025 elections.

“It is evident that there is a lack of leadership in the left-wing world, and Daniel is one of those indispensable leaders in the perspective of a transformative project.. I think that this is a debate that the Chilean left has pending and that it still has some time to resolve and consolidate a project of profound transformations, which goes much further than what th
e government of President Boric has managed to implement so far,” Insunza, who was part of the Justice Committee for Daniel Jadue, told EL TIEMPO.

For now, What is clear is that the former mayor of Recoleta still has to face a trial in which it will be necessary to determine whether the crimes of fraud, bribery, and tax fraud existed. and unfair administration in the case of the so-called popular pharmacies, a process that cost him his position as mayor, and that will keep him with national roots and away from the mayor’s office that became, for more than a decade, the main link in his popularity.

Andrea Aguilar Cordoba

Special for EL TIEMPO

Santiago de Chile