2023-08-05 01:24:28
These have not been easy days for the senator from La Araucanía. In the midst of the internal tensions of the Party for Democracy (PPD), Jaime Quintana had to face the death of his father, Daniel, whom he describes as his great political reference.
In the midst of personal pain, the parliamentarian registered on two occasions a list to preside over the community in which he has been a member since it was founded, in 1987. His nomination -which in the PPD they attribute was promoted by the government- meant displacing Natalia Piergentili, the current helmsman, of her aspirations to run for re-election. Both met on Wednesday in Valparaíso, where the incorporation of Piergentili as vice president for the internal elections to be held on August 27 was sealed.
Was there a veto from La Moneda to Piergentili’s candidacy?
When I heard that in the match I quickly cleared it up. If the chosen candidate for La Moneda was me, I had no explicit signals. I rule out that here there has been an intervention by La Moneda in the election and a veto against Natalia.
Wasn’t there a request from Minister Tohá or from President Gabriel Boric for you to head the list?
No. That does not prevent someone who is a member of the PPD, such as Minister Tohá or others, from having an opinion.
Minister Tohá called Piergentili’s leadership “divisive.” Do you share that?
They are opinions. I think it is within a completely normal behavior. It would be rare for an authority to be completely marginalized.
It is said that with his figure the party would be more controlled…
There has been much speculation about this, but the important thing is going to be the effort of this new table to clearly define the role of the party with the government.
But it has transpired, compared to Piergentili, that you are closer to La Moneda, to Tohá.
The fact that there may be a closeness with President Boric, with Minister Tohá, does not mean that one is going to look at the ceiling in the face of errors that may occur.
One of the things that happened to Piergentili was to remain firm in competing on two lists in the constituent election. However, she remained faithful to what the party decided. Isn’t there a certain mistreatment in blaming her?
It’s good to put things in perspective. Natalia had the courage to lead the PPD at an extremely complex time and to defend a center-left ideology against a generation that, in general, has disdained our world. And of course, there could be mistakes in the way of executing a strategy, but it was a collectively defined strategy.
In a complex scenario for the ruling party in the midst of the mess of money, how do you expect the relationship of the PPD with La Moneda to be?
I distinguish three stages: a first, which is when the PPD is summoned to be part of the government, basically because of the votes it could add in Congress. A second stage is the arrival of Carolina Tohá. There the PPD begins to show experience and political capacity in government management. There is a third stage, which is the one that will touch this table, which is to consolidate this contribution and value the experience and capacity of the PPD as a whole, beyond a particular leadership. After that, in order not to repeat tensions, it must be assumed that Minister Tohá is in the heart of La Moneda, while the PPD, her party, is located on the government’s border. Both things are not incompatible, quite the contrary, it can be a great opportunity if we manage it well.
When you place yourself on the frontier of the government, don’t you talk about the existence of a certain degree of disaffection with the political project?
It is that I am not referring to the politics of the rings. It is no mystery to anyone that the PPD, a progressive social-democratic party, is a party that has the ability to articulate and seek understanding with other forces in the political center, even with the opposition. So, I am posing more in ideological terms. A border party, in turn, cannot be an obedient party, but it does have the obligation to be responsible.
You talk about government mistakes. How do you evaluate the management of the Executive in the mess of money?
What I have read as a political line of the government is to let all the information flow, that all acts of irregularities, crimes, eventual corruption be transparent, and I understand that this is what has happened. If the government had sought an agreement with the opposition at the beginning of this scandal, we probably would not know the magnitude of this problem and its structure, because here there are clearly some issues that have their origin in laws, budgetary glosses, the problem of regional governments. The line set by the government is adequate to reach the end, but it does not seem like a very clear line for the purposes of containing this crisis.
Isn’t it a bad sign that authorities leak out? Perhaps major surgery is necessary.
Sure, there is a whole discussion about how responsibilities are assumed. But that is up to the President to define. But in this the government was taken by surprise, it did not imagine that this was happening. What yes, this crisis also brings political effects, because the agreement case came to demolish the discourse of moral superiority that was the mantra of the Broad Front for a long time and that has now become its karma.
What mistakes have been made?
It took a long time before we decided that the government’s strategy was to let all these events continue to be known. That could have been verbalized in another way, it could have been said that we are going to opt for transparency more categorically. The strategy has not been clear, it has not been fine and it has not been updated, because the crisis is not over yet.
And to whom do you attribute that responsibility? To the president? To the political committee?
Probably all of the above. And probably the coalitions also have responsibility.
Do you think the government has not listened to its parties?
Little has been heard, there has been a lot of criticism, there has been quite a bit of stridency within the ruling party. That’s why I think we have to improve those channels. That also has to do with the alliance policy, with the projection of the center-left.
Would a cabinet adjustment help decompress the crisis? Pressure has increased for Minister Jackson to leave.
A change of cabinet can help, it is a resource that the leaders have at hand. But the times have to be evaluated by the presidents.
But do you see that there is a propitious moment for that, to evaluate Jackson?
I believe that before that, it is necessary to define what the government’s priorities are for the coming years and how this process and this dialogue will be faced (…). I think that this must be done beforehand, the cabinet changes will come later. I, particularly, believe that the creation of the National Care System is the only great reform that could cause a change in the perception of the citizenry about the government and even project the center-left in the future. If the government understands the political dimension of the issue, it cannot be explained that a minister as questioned as Giorgio Jackson, and it is a fact of reality, heads the presidential advisory council in that area. It is part of what the government has to define, but for that the government must first define its priorities.
Stripping Jackson of leading that would not weaken him even more in a context in which it seems that the President does not want to remove him?
Minister Jackson has become, in fact, a problem for La Moneda. What the government needs are ministers who dialogue with the opposition from the difference. It is an irreplaceable condition for your success. There are ministers, and across the board, both of Democratic Socialism and of Approve Dignity, who embody this disposition very well. The facts show that Minister Jackson is not one of them, because the government needs facilitators in the dialogue with the opposition.
Should the President remove him or is there a time when Jackson himself should take notice and push for his removal?
I cannot pronounce myself regarding the decisions that are the responsibility of the President or individually of each of his ministers.
He said that the Broad Front’s speech of moral superiority fell. How do you project the relationship that Democratic Socialism has with the Broad Front?
My role will be to try to contribute to that, to the dialogue. I think we have to clear up some things and it has to do with the projection of the center-left. For example, the ruling party must have a strategy of political projection. Otherwise, the anxiety to do everything in four years ends up playing against and presenting the errors. It is time to assume that the government program cannot be fully fulfilled and that we must work for favorable political conditions that give continuity to the agenda of responsible changes that Chile needs to achieve development. From that point of view, I don’t think the next election is lost. This dizzying time does not allow for such hasty analysis.
Should the President be honest that they will not be able to comply with everything?
You have to be honest, because it’s nothing special. The last two governments, Bachelet and Piñera, have not complied with the program in its entirety, far from it.
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