Despite objections from opposition parliamentarians, the project that delivers a bonus of $120,000 to 7.5 million people, extends the labor IFE until December and also the parental postnatal benefit unanimous support of the Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies.
The initiative was announced by the government on Monday of this week and entered with immediate discussion to Congress, so its processing began this Tuesday in the legislative body.
However, the move has not been without criticism. On the one hand, from the opposition they called it “bonus I approve” for the supposed effects that it could have in view of the constitutional plebiscite, while others pointed to the “changes” that the Executive has applied in relation to economic aid.
At the end of June, during his national tour to the Arica and Parinacota region, the President Gabriel Boric He ruled out delivering an Emergency Family Income (IFE) for winter as some parliamentarians had requested, appealing that the measure could increase inflationary pressures.
“Faced with the problem of inflation, the proposal that is being made increases inflation even more. One cannot pretend to deliver a solution that further aggravates the problem,” the President said on that occasion, but he specified that the government was evaluating other alternatives, which took place this Monday with the Chile Supports Winter Bonus.
However the Minister of the Security, Giorgio Jacksoncame out against the criticism this morning and ruled out an alleged “flip” by the Executive regarding economic aid and the sayings of the Head of State.
“I don’t think there is a flip at all”, he pointed out in dialogue with Tele13 Radio, and remarked that the measure corresponds -in addition- to a transversal claim by parliamentarians.
“What was demanded in a transversal way by parliamentarians, in this case from the Finance Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, is precisely that the President make a direct transfer aid,” he added.
And he emphasized that “when the President is asked if there is going to be a Universal IFE for the winter, what he says is no, that that would be a bad decision, because we are not in the same context in which the Universal IFE, but we are looking for direct aid mechanisms focused on the lower income sectors”.
In this context, he specified what he thinks “totally consistent”, since it is “precisely what the President mentioned, that there was not going to be a universal IFE, he said ‘there will be aid and we are preparing the aid for a winter that has been hard’”.
During the dialogue, the Segpres minister also addressed the constitutional reform project that empowers the Armed Forces to safeguard the critical infrastructure of the country, without the need to decree a State of Constitutional Exception.
Congress signed the bill into law on Monday of this week. And during their deliberation, only two deputies from Approve Dignidad -government coalition- approved the initiative: Jaime Mulet y Felix Bugueno, both from the Social Green Regionalist Front (FRVS). On the contrary, their peers from the Communist Party abstained and the Broad Front rejected, as did Acción Humanista.
And it is that it was the votes of Democratic Socialism (PS, PPR, PR and PL) that allowed -together with the DC and sectors of the right- that the report of the mixed commission that resolved the discrepancies between the Lower House and the Senate was dispatched.
Last Tuesday, it was Jackson himself who stated that the government -if approved- would make use of the measure, an idea that was ratified yesterday by the interior minister, Izkia Siches.
“Together with the Minister of Defense and the Segpres team, we are doing an in-depth legal analysis of the regulations necessary for its implementation. Tomorrow we will have to request a new extension of the state of exception. This is maintained and we will eventually evaluate in the short term if we can use an instrument like this”, said the chief of staff.
This morning, that signal was confirmed again by the Segpres minister, who specified that “We are not going to have problems implementing it if it was an attribution widely approved by the National Congress”.
In addition, he stated that the “consensus that was generated at the level of Congress” shows that the tool should be “on the table as something that probably needs a level of continuity,” in case the proposed new Constitution is approved.
In his opinion, “if this generated a consensus after the constitutional debate on the proposed text had ended, and it had the majority, it obviously seems to me one of the things that the current proposal does not contemplate”, for which “It would be completely logical, as I said in the commission at the time, that if this is a consensus, that it be incorporated into any of the two constitutional scenarios that we will have on September 5”.