The Chilean Government on the impeachment of Piñera: “It has electoral purposes”

The government of Chile said that the constitutional accusation presented by the opposition to remove the country’s president, Sebastian Piñera, after its inclusion in the Pandora Papers, “Has no legal basis” and its objective is “purely electoral”.

“We have not seen in the history of Chile a haste, a lack of seriousness when it comes to studying the antecedents for a constitutional accusation,” said the Minister of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, Juan José Ossa.

“The important thing was to present it to be voted on before the November elections,” added Ossa, whose ministry is dedicated to relations between the Executive and Parliament.

The Chilean opposition introduced this Wednesday in the Chamber of Deputies the constitutional accusation (impeachment) against Piñera for having failed to the principle of “probity” and “seriously compromising the honor of the Nation” after the investigation into alleged irregularities in the sale in the 2010 in the British Virgin Islands tax haven of a mining megaproject.

The objective of the opposition is that the accusatory libel, which can lead to the dismissal of the president or his disqualification from holding public office, is voted in the next few days in the Chamber of Deputies and passes to the Senate – the body that acts as a jury – before of the elections on November 21.

“We are seeing the worst in politics, but that cannot justify doing anything to win a couple of votes and thus damage democracy, as some far-left parliamentarians claim,” said the official spokesman, Jaime Bellolio.

“They want to take away from Chileans the possibility of making a democratic and republican transfer of command, as has happened since the return to democracy,” added the spokesman.

After the publication led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), The Chilean Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation last week for bribery and tax crimes against Piñera, who argues that the facts disclosed were already investigated and dismissed in 2017.

As shown by the ICIJ, in collaboration with the Chilean media CIPER and LaBot, the payment of Minera Dominga had to be made in three installments, but the last one was conditional on the area not being declared of environmental protection, despite the fact that the mine threatens a reserve natural with unique penguins.

Environmental protection, which was not finally decreed, depended on Piñera, one of the country’s main fortunes and who had assumed power for his first term (2010-2014) just a few months before the sale of the project, which is currently pending. of appeals in the Supreme Court.

This is the second attempt to politically judge the ruler, after the failed attempt in November 2019 for alleged human rights violations amid massive protests against inequality, the most serious since the end of the military dictatorship.