What
we already know is shocking. Some of the new cabinet ministers had
no computers in their offices; some computers had no information on
their hard drives. More than 6000 Left wing contractees were made
permanent government workers in the final months of the Bachelet
administration. Huge budget obligations were made in the first 70
days of 2010, and some programs, such as the Bicentennial
Commission, were left with only petty cash, or nearly. There was
even an expenditure that goes 20 percent above what’s allowed under
the current budget law.
What sort of larceny was this? More of what we’ve seen for the last
20 years: dozens of corruption cases, as grotesque as they are
difficult to sort out? No, this is different; something new. This is
corruption, but more than that it’s looting. Because corruption
happens in peacetime, under a settled government, while looting
happens in war, in a time of turmoil. And what the Left wing has
done is to treat the new managers of the state as though they were
genuine enemies.
Yes, enemies, because the Left wing practiced on them the old
Russian policy of scorched earth, so that when "they" come to power
they won’t find anything to help them govern, when they take over
"our" turf (since the Left wing considers it owns the state), what’s
missing will be so large that their failure will be more likely.
That’s what invaders deserve, after all – to fail.
The Left wing didn’t want the political war to end. The damage they
had caused in the past was well known, but they wanted to damage
future projects too. [Former Left wing President Eduardo] Frei
suggested how to do this years ago: Let’s spend all the money so
there won’t be any left for them. Little did we suspect that was
what his party was actually going to do, wage an outright war of
attrition.
Given what’s happened, nothing would be easier than to document and
quantify what the Left wing has done. But will the Alliance deputies
in the House of Representatives be willing to bring charges against
former ministers before they’ve been out of office for more than
three months and thus become exempt from prosecution? And even if
they are prosecuted, how about the problem of Left wing’s Fifth
Columnists – all those allegedly “technical” and “administrative”
types who are in position to undermine the Piñera government? Who
are they? Where are they?
We don’t want a witch-hunt, no. Neither do we want to sit sucking
our thumbs, only to find in a few months that the screws on the
wheels of state have been twisted the wrong way.
There’s a final problem that’s also disturbing. The
people and companies that received the Left wing’s enormous advance
payments (in amounts between 39 thousand and 300 million pesos) –
did they wonder what Piñera’s administration, which would oversee
their work, was going to say about the money they’d been given? That
the Committee of the Relatives of Detained and Disappeared People
didn’t say anything is no surprise. But that A Roof for Chile [an
NGO that provides housing for Chile’s poor], INFOCAP [an NGO that
trains workers], the Pablo Neruda Foundation and FASIC [an NGO
seeking to punish those responsible for human rights violations
during the military dictatorship] haven’t raised the subject with
the new government is, at the least, impolite.
Some may have thought it would be a shame not to get “their” money
before March 11, because after that would be too late.
Source: Gonzalo Rojas Sánchez
Mr. Rojas, 56, is a professor of law and history, a
member of Opus Dei, and a weekly columnist for Chile’s leading
newspaper, El Mercurio. His political views are extremely
conservative.
(The column provoked an unprecedented 1,046 emailed reader comments,
the majority agreeing with Rojas. The Left wing’s 20 years in power
gave it ample time to build up a reputation, deserved or not, for
corruption. The reader comments, in Spanish of course, are at
http://blogs.elmercurio.com/columnasycartas/2010/03/24/el-saqueo-del-estado.asp
(As Rojas doesn't mention, similar claims were made when
Pinochet surrendered power to the Left wing in 1989. State-owned
businesses were sold at -- some said -- give-away prices to Pinochet
political cronies. The privatized phone, power, water, airline and
so forth companies set the stage for the right's unchallenged
control of Chile’s economy, giving it the resources to fund Chile's
two right wing parties, the Renovación Nacional, RN, to which Pres.
Piñera belongs, and the Independent Democratic Union, UDI, to whose
policies Mr. Rojas generally subscribes.)
About this
blog
Hi,
I am Edward.
I work and live since 2005 in Santiago, Chile and
manage my own company, here.
My blog aims to provide some insight in the daily
life in Chile, because it is just more than daily life.
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Happy to read your blog and understand
what it has meant to you, and probably most people that never have gone
through such an impacting experience as in smaller or larger scale
Chileans had gone throughout history. No matter how many times, you go
through it; it never ceases to affect us as a whole. This is obviously
the beginning of a story that will go for long, since to begin with the
government can still not come with a real number of people that have
diedand this continues to change even though more than a week
has gone by. Thus, changing the figures back and forward every day as if
we were talking about a business inventory instead of people and this is
for a country which is supposed to be more than well prepared for this
type of situations.
Even though, earthquakes are part of
our country’s history it is always staggering for us natives to see the
effects, devastation and pain that they leave behind. Not to mention the
loss of what so difficultly have been recover from the previous
disasters and the fact that we have to start all over again. In fact,
there are studies of Charles Darwin while he was in Valdivia of
the 1835 Concepción earthquake when this very same city disappeared.
Afterward, a tsunami came and flooded 1.671 kilometers between the
Cachapoal and Valdivia rivers.
However, at the end of the day there
are always new things to learn and also to remember. Personally, it has
made me realize that we never think or remember that life is
borrowed. That we came here and at that very same moment it was written
that at some point we have to go. That life is to short to we wasted in
petty things, as all we have is the here and now. That even though
money is important, we seem to dedicate all of our time and strength to
acquire it forgetting to appreciate what we already have with gratitude;
always, expecting that something will happen that will bring happiness
and in this process we neglect our loved ones, family friends and even
ourselves.
It is true, that our country has
changed in many ways for the better but it has also brought undesirable
ones to our culture and people and although at times like this we manage
to get back to what we once were we also very soon forget. Yesterday, I
came upon an article that if not in complete agreement with all that is
said I will just
quotewhat stroke me the most.
“Like all major misfortunes, the
current tragedy of Chile can be seen as a test, a chance to ask
ourselves who we really are, what really matters as we rebuild, not only
our wrecked hospitals and broken roads and fractured bodies, but our
damaged identity.
I believe that the deepest wells of that solidarity and fellowship I
witnessed when the earthquake of 1960 reduced my land to rubble is still
inside most of the people of Chile, and will constitute the main source
of our efforts to lift our country up from its desolation, the reason
why we may be able to once again prevail, as so many times in the past,
against the forces of blind nature.
Fifty years ago, the people of Chile
found a way to survive all that death and destruction and I can only
hope that this time we can painfully, painstakingly, even joyfully, do
it again.”
I really hope that we can take the
time and ask ourselves who we really are!!!
Hi,
I am Edward.