Gabriel Boric during a meeting with ministers and 18 parliamentarians at the Cerro Castillo presidential palace in Viña del Mar (Chile) on June 15. GOVERNMENT OF CHILE
The Chilean government of Gabriel Boric has denounced in court the recording and dissemination of a private conversation between the President and a group of 18 parliamentarians from different political sectors, representatives of Arauco, Biobío and La Araucanía, where the public security crisis affected it is the southern part of the country, which has only grown and gotten worse in recent years. The meeting between the President and Congressmen took place Tuesday this week at the Cerro Castillo Presidential Palace in the city of Viña del Mar, some 120 kilometers from the Chilean capital. At the meeting, requested by the parliamentarians themselves ahead of an upcoming visit by the head of state to those regions, Boric addressed sensitive security issues that La Moneda said could stand in the way of measures to stem the violence. “It’s one of the most unusual things we’ve seen in a meeting with the President,” said Interior Minister Carolina Tohá, who was the first authority to publicly denounce events this Thursday morning.
“You see, I used the word terrorism openly,” the president said at the meeting, which Tohá said was “very positive.” When he found out about the leak, which was reproduced verbatim by some media, Boric was “very shocked”, according to his minister. “It’s really very worrying,” said the Home Department chief, acknowledging the government’s concerns about the events. “It’s certainly outside the rules of a meeting of this nature,” Tohá said.
The Chilean government assured that the President specifically asked the guests not to take minutes and that this was accepted by all present. When a similar meeting with the same guests took place some time ago, according to the executive, Boric explained that the meeting could not be registered precisely because of the sensitivity of the topics discussed. La Moneda reports that parliamentarians would have been offended by the President’s warning.
The reported facts could constitute a violation of Article 161a of the Chilean Penal Code, which is typical of the behavior of those who “eavesdrop, intercept, record or reproduce conversations or communications of a private nature without the permission of the party concerned and by whatever means”. .”
The minister responsible for relations with Congress, the socialist Álvaro Elizalde, assured that the fact was “very serious”. The head of the General Secretariat of the Office of the President explained that this meeting had been convened by the President himself, at the request of the parliamentarians, “to deal with a very sensitive issue, namely security in this area”. It was Elizalde who announced that a search of this kind could amount to a crime for which the government would, by law, file a complaint that would open the way for an appropriate investigation. “It seems to us that it is serious, especially when it comes to sensitive security issues,” Elizalde said before the complaint was filed in Valparaíso this Thursday afternoon. “The complaint will be forwarded to the regional anti-corruption unit for investigation of the procedure in question,” the state ministry said.
For the Boric minister, what happened violates “trust, which is essential for the dialogue that must exist between the different authorities” and it is “a violation of the minimum standards of trust that are required in discussions of this type.” have to pass”.
The government has communicated with all those attending Tuesday’s meeting to update them on the measure and will work on a protocol for future meetings with the president, preventing further talks from leaking out. In the meantime, the fact has provoked different political reactions. The leader of the right-wing Republican Party, José Antonio Kast, was one of the first to criticize what happened. “The complaint about the illegal recording of the meeting with President Boric by the participants of a meeting in Cerro Castillo is not an anecdote. “It is a serious crime that must be reported, investigated and punished,” stressed one of the strong voices of the opposition.
For the head of the ruling party’s Chamber of Deputies, Vlado Mirosevic, the person responsible for recording and sharing it is likely to be “outrageous”. Meanwhile, Senate leader Juan Antonio Coloma of the right-wing UDI party said: “Because he’s a parliamentarian, no one is outside what could be a criminal act.”
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