The next leader of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib), Andrés Allamand, has had to resign from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, one month after the end of the Government of Sebastián Piñera, on March 11. He does so amid strong criticism from the Chilean opposition for “remarkable neglect of duties”, because it is considered that while Chile is experiencing a new migration crisis in the north of the country, due to the arrival of immigrants from neighboring countries, Allamand held meetings in Madrid regarding his new position that he will assume on March 12 and that he has not been seen active for weeks. The 65-year-old lawyer, one of the main faces of the Chilean right in recent decades, has announced this Sunday his departure from the Executive from the Palacio de La Moneda, together with the Minister of the Interior, Rodrigo Delgado, after a virtual meeting with President Piñera, who is on vacation and who accepted his resignation. Allamand took advantage of the occasion to inform the country of his definitive retirement from Chilean politics.
After the criticism raised above all from the Chilean opposition, which requested a pronouncement from the Comptroller’s Office and is even evaluating a constitutional accusation against Allamand in Congress, Piñera’s Foreign Ministry had to report in the previous days that the foreign minister was making use of his legal holiday between January 31 and February 14, for which he was subrogated in his functions by Undersecretary Rodrigo Yáñez. In these two weeks of vacation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that Allamand traveled to Madrid, where he held meetings with various local authorities and Segib officials, in the weeks prior to formally assuming the position for which he was elected in November by unanimity. Last Thursday, it was the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, the socialist José Manuel Albares, who reported through social networks of a first working meeting with Allamand in Madrid, with photographs included.
Allamand indicated this Sunday that he informed the Chilean government of his trip to Spain during his vacation, because the Segib headquarters are in Madrid. He added that he maintained permanent contact with the authorities of the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs that resulted in the meetings that Chile held on Friday with Bolivia due to the migration crisis. “However, it must be admitted that this situation that I have just explained has given rise to a series of criticisms that affect the Government of which I am a part and, incidentally, intend to discredit the work of the Foreign Ministry. These criticisms have not only distorted the activities that I have carried out abroad, but also contributed to inconveniently stressing the political climate, in circumstances where serenity favors the best transfer of power between the current Government and the elected Government” by Gabriel Boric Allamand explained about the resignation, which comes after talks with Piñera.
Historical face of the right – he is a member of the National Renovation party, which was Piñera’s own party – he has been for decades a negotiator who has made a name for himself by establishing good relations with those who do not necessarily share his political thinking. A member of the liberal wing of his sector, although over the years he has hardened his position, he was elected to lead the Segib on November 26. In the Government of Salvador Allende he was an outstanding secondary leader of the opposition. A lawyer from the University of Chile, in the early 1980s he began to restructure the institutions of the Chilean right, commissioned by one of his political fathers, Sergio Onofre Jarpa, who between 1983 and 1985 was Minister of the Interior of the dictatorship. of Augusto Pinochet. It was the time when a slow opening process began in response to the social mobilizations of 1983. Allamand, then, was one of the founders of the National Union Movement (MUN), which sought the renewal of the right and not to reissue the rebellious National Party, dissolved by Onofre Jarpa himself. Since then, it has become one of the fundamental bridges between the center-left opposition and the military regime.
Towards the end of the authoritarian administration, he was one of the main negotiators of the constitutional reforms of 1989 with the center-left Coalition, although some of the commitments assumed by the National Renewal were not fulfilled. Together with leaders such as Evelyn Mattehi –presidential candidate in 2013 against Michelle Bachelet–, Alberto Espina and Piñera himself, at the beginning of the transition they formed a group known as youth patrola generational replacement generation with the right of the 1973 coup d’état.
He presided over his party and then was a deputy between 1994 and 1998, when he aspired to reach the Senate and did not succeed, because the political partners of the Independent Democratic Union, UDI, put one of his best letters as competition. Allamand then began a journey through the desert, which gave the title to one of his books where he combines the essay with his memoirs. In the writing, he analyzes the development and reconstitution of the Chilean right from the dictatorship to the transition and reviews the failed attempt to shift the party towards the liberal. After a long stay in the United States and after years away from contingent politics, Allamand returned to Chile in the first half of the 2000s, where he had one of the great conflicts with Piñera. In the 2005 election, Allamand was strongly supporting the UDI presidential candidate, Joaquín Lavín, when Piñera launched his own candidacy for RN, Allamand’s party. It was a crisis between the two and it shook the relationship between the two main right-wing parties. But although neither of them won La Moneda, because Bachelet triumphed, he left Piñera installed for the 2009 election, in which he finally became president.
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Allamand and Piñera have had a complex relationship, probably because they always disputed the same leading role in the liberal right. It was Piñera, however, who became president, despite the fact that his family origins are in the Christian Democrats, unlike Allamand who has always been in this area of the political spectrum. Those who know speak of a tight and particular bond between the two, who are old acquaintances. In his first term as a senator, Allamand left Congress to become Minister of Defense in the first Piñera government. He unsuccessfully tried to contest the succession in 2013, when he lost the primary to UDI leader Pablo Longueira, for which he again ran for the Senate and won. He was in Parliament in the midst of the social unrest of 2019 and, from that position, he was one of the main voices that called for voting rejection in the October 2020 plebiscite, where the opposite option won, to replace the Constitution (80% against 20%). Since July 2020, she has led Piñera’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Married for the second time to Marcela Cubillos, one of the main right-wing conventionalists, Allamand reported this Sunday of his retirement from local politics: “At this moment, which marks the definitive end of my long life in national politics, I want to thank the affection of thousands of compatriots who trusted me with their support in the different responsibilities that I have had to assume and also to my adversaries, with whom I always tried to maintain a constructive relationship of respect, loyalty and civic friendship”.
In the north of Chile, a multiple crisis has been going on for months, which, among other elements, includes the high irregular immigration from neighboring countries to this area. In recent days in the Tarapacá region, flights have been suspended, roadblocks, commercial paralysis and massive demonstrations. Truck drivers blocked the entrance to the city of Iquique, in protest against uncontrolled immigration from neighboring countries and the increase in crime. The region of Arica and Paricanota, the northern gateway to Chile, has joined the demonstrations.
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