The elected president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, met with members of the Constituent Assembly this Tuesday (21), at Palácio Pereira, the building of the former seat of Congress, where the new Charter is being drafted.
“I don’t want a party Constituent Assembly, which is at the service of the government. We will be in the Executive Office doing everything possible so that they have the freedom and independence to work in a sovereign way,” said the newly elected leader, alongside the president of the organization, the leader Mapuche Elisa Loncón.
The Constituent Assembly enters the final phase of drafting the document, which should be ready in July and will be evaluated by the population in a plebiscite scheduled for October 2022. The exact date will be decided by the new Congress, which takes office on March 11th. The body’s next important milestone will be the composition of the new board of directors. Thus, Loncón will leave the post and will be replaced by a new president.
The day before, Boric went to La Moneda Palace to meet President Sebastián Piñera accompanied by Deputy Giorgio Jackson and his campaign manager, Izkia Siches. This Tuesday, she arrived at the Pereira Palace with Camila Vallejo, a member of the Communist Party and Boric’s ally since the time of the student protests in 2011. She is quoted to assume a ministry in the next term.
Asked again about what his cabinet will be like, the president-elect declined to name names and stated that the choice must be announced before mid-January. Many people gathered at the door of the building in downtown Santiago to greet Boric, who took pictures and greeted supporters.
Loncón received the future Chilean leader with a tight hug, an image that was successful on social media. The Mapuche leader, who is criticized for meddling in local politics, came out in favor of Boric during the campaign. The day after the election, she reiterated that she did not hide her preferences: “There was a denial that affected the country’s democratic advances, in relation to the climate crisis and the situation of women’s rights,” she said in an interview with a radio station. .
After the meeting, Jackson gave a press conference in which the theme of Social Security predominated. “We want to increase universal minimum pensions, and this is an important difference between how the president-elect thinks and how Piñera thinks, but they both talked a lot about it at the meeting. We are aware that for permanent expenses we have to have permanent income. The question of how to finance the universal basic pension is the one that will concern us since the beginning of the government.”
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