Chile: they assess the postponement of the April elections due to …

In Chile, where disorientation reigns due to the paradox that the country is going through – it is one of the world leaders in the number of vaccinations but is facing a new wave of infections which is equivalent to the worst figures of last year -, debate these last days on the idea to postpone the elections on Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 April, where the 155 conventional voters who will have to write the new Constitution, governors, mayors and councilors will be elected.

According to a recent survey by the consultancy firm Plaza Pública Cadem, the 62% of respondents are in favor of postponing the elections, while 36% are linked to the idea of ​​keeping the date.

However, Almost half of Santiago’s 52 municipalities and around 14 million people across Chile will return to full quarantine due to the coronavirus from this Thursday due to the alarming rise in cases in recent days, it was announced on Monday.

In this context of the advance of the pandemic, there is a heated debate within the Chilean government on the possibility of postponing the votes. Among the officials who have spoken out in this regard, there is the Health Minister, Enrique Paris, who assured that “we we do not agree to suspend the elections if the protocols are respected as they were during the “constitutional plebiscite of October 25, 2020”.

“We have to hold an election,” added Paris, while acknowledging that the country is experiencing a new wave of infections, with more than 6,000 daily cases in recent days. Since the start of the pandemic, Chile has already accumulated 931,939 cases and 22,279 deaths.

For its part, Deputy María José Hoffmann, from Pinochet’s Independent Democratic Union (UDI), said that a suspension of the elections would be a decision “strictly sanitary, but our will is that the process is carried out successfully“.

“We have no history that makes us argue today that the election as scheduled on two different days could generate a danger,” said Maite Orsini, member of parliament of the opposition force of the Democratic Revolution ( RD).

The senator Guido Girardi, of the Opposition Party for Democracy (PPD), went further and accused the executive of failing to take the necessary steps to avoid the suspension of the elections. “We do not see the government as serious action to avoid taking the decision to suspend the elections. It’s like they want to hit a tipping point, with beds busy choosing to postpone, ”Girardi said.

Currently, the senator underlined in dialogue with Radio ADN, “we are in a critical situation”. If the increase in positive cases continues and the chain of infections is not cut, “it is very likely that two weeks before it will be necessary to assess whether it is postponed, which nobody wants and which can be avoided”, he warned.

While the electoral future is being resolved, the authorities of the Ministry of Health have chosen to continue the existing vaccination schedule and to begin this Monday the vaccination of table members between 51 and 56 years old.

For the first time in its history, Chile will divide its elections into two days: Saturday April 10 and Sunday April 11, when the 155 conventional voters who must draft are elected. in a maximum of 12 months, a new Constitution, which will leave behind that drafted in 1980 under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

The 16 governors, mayors (mayors) and regional councilors will also be elected for the first time.

According to the investigation by Plaza Pública Cadem, 61% of those consulted want their municipality to return to total quarantine due to the increase in cases of coronavirus.

Currently, 17 of the 52 municipalities of the metropolitan region are in total isolation. Since this Thursday, however, this number will increase and almost half will find themselves in this situation, affecting more than 14 million people.

This was announced by the government on Monday, after Health Minister Enrique Paris warned that “cases continue to increase across the country “, with 6,155 infections and 80 deaths in the past 24 hours.