Chile: Chile president gives ardent protection of a majority rules government, 50 years after Pinochet coup
By Ahmad Hadizat Omayoza, Mamos Nigeria
As the country marked the 50th anniversary of General Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état, which ushered in 17 years of brutal military dictatorship, Chile’s president has spoken out in support of democracy.
“Issues with a vote based system can continuously be settled … and an overthrow is rarely reasonable – nor is imperiling the common freedoms of the people who think in an unexpected way,” said Gabriel Boric in a discourse outside La Moneda, the official royal residence bombarded by English fabricated Peddler Tracker jets during the 1973 upset.
Salvador Allende, the fairly chosen leftwing president ousted by the military, gave a last radio location to the country prior to committing suicide in his office at the royal residence as the tanks shut in. Before the rebuilding of a majority rule government in 1990, in excess of 40,000 individuals became survivors of torment, political detainment, execution or “constrained vanishing”.
Boric stated on Monday, “It is time to make up for these absences, correct the faults, repair the damage, and project ourselves beyond our pain.”
The anniversary occurred against a gloomy backdrop for democracy in Latin America, where poverty and crime have helped populist figures on both the left and the right gain more and more political support.
The Latinobarómetro 2023 survey reveals that favorable opinions of democracy are at an all-time low. Among respondents to the survey, 33% differ that majority rules system was the best framework for government regardless of its concerns.
Portugal’s prime minister and the presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, and Uruguay were with Boric. Out before La Moneda, the goliath banner which flies on the concourse was brought down to half-pole.
In the days leading up to the commemoration, the atmosphere in Chile has been tense.
The right-wing Unión Demócrata Independiente, which was established to preserve the dictatorship’s legacy and was one of several parties to refuse to sign a pledge to uphold democracy, issued a statement declaring the coup d’état to be “inevitable.”
It even went so far as to attribute the military takeover to the “Chilean left.” As is standard for the party, and some on the Chilean right, the assertion kept away from the utilization of the expression “fascism” or reference to a rebellion.
The party congressman Sergio Bobadilla defended the coup earlier on Monday morning by stating that “there was no other way out.”
Chile has no regulation that punishes refusal, support, minimisation or festivity of the serious denials of basic freedoms executed under the autocracy.
“Obviously there was another option!” Boric said in his discourse. ” And when we face another crisis in the future, there will always be an alternative that calls for more democracy rather than less of it.”
Boric’s four-point declaration, which sought to uphold democracy and guarantee that the events of fifty years ago would not occur again, was signed by all four living ex-presidents—Michelle Bachelet, Ricardo Lagos, Eduardo Frei, and Sebastián Piera, who did not attend the ceremony.
In a procession around La Moneda lit by candles on Sunday night, hundreds of women chanted “Nunca más!” never more.
Prior in the day, in the midst of strain just before a commemoration that is frequently set apart by fights, Boric had taken part in a walk down the Alameda, one of the fundamental roads through the focal point of Santiago, close by the family members of effectively vanished individuals.
Hooded nonconformists went after pieces of the walk and crushed glass around the official castle. In the Cementerio General, graves of those associated with the dictatorship were set on fire and attacked by others.
Boric said that he “didn’t lament briefly” being “in favor of the people who endured” during the walk.
In August, Boric sent off an arrangement to look for the vanished: the first time that the Chilean government has taken over the search.
1,469 forced disappearance victims are still missing today. Only 307 have been found since Chile got back to a majority rule government in 1990.
