Lhe pardon crisis continues to escalate and yesterday new regional actors made their opinion known.
The mayor of Punta Arenas, Claudio Radonich, spoke yesterday in his capacity as lawyer. “Pardons are a legal exception that allow convicted persons to be released before serving their sentences, and for this reason each case must be carefully examined. For this reason, almost always the list of those pardoned has been for humanitarian reasons”.
-Not all have been for humanitarian reasons…
“The foundations have always been quite objective and a significant number have been for humanitarian reasons, but the most complex were the statements indicating that in the eyes of the President, the evidence had not been well evaluated and, therefore, it was not complied with due process. It is the first time that something like this has been held in a democracy and that can be very complex, when we see that there are people who have been victims of crimes and those convicted go free or with minimal sentences.
Radonich affirmed that these facts mustThey wanted to strengthen the public security agenda, “where we have seen an increase in violent crimes and drug trafficking in Magallanes,” he said.
In this sense, he insisted on his request made to the Government four months ago so that “persons with unfulfilled arrest warrants, convicted persons and irregular foreigners are not allowed to travel by plane.”
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In turn, the lawyer and ex-gobernador, Juan José Arcos, affirmed: “We are seeing a clear example of the old policy applied by young people, where what Boric did was to privilege pituitos, school friends, the revolution, over technical people. The fact that for a technical position such as the Ministry of Justice, a person who is a sociologist is appointed, the fact that he later says that everything is the fault of the minister, means that everything goes to the lot, because for a reason it is called Pardon Presidential. The first thing is an absolute lack of neatness and that is similar to what is happening in Punta Arenas where for a service as important as the Civil Registry, trained people who were doing their job are removed, such as the Migration Service, and a quota is opened for political pitutes. The second thing is that this shows that the government’s vocation is to support the violentists who were the ones who brought it to power.”
Frei’s controversial pardons
What happened with Boric is not an isolated case. In the past, other Presidents have also received strong questions for the exercise of this controversial presidential power.
In 2009, former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz Tagle, then a candidate for La Moneda, was harshly criticized for the pardons made during his administration. An investigation by Ciper Chile, released in 2010, revealed that of the 343 pardons granted by Frei, 14 corresponded to homicides, 8 to parricides and 56 to crimes linked to drug trafficking. The most common were for driving while intoxicated.
Ciper had to resort to the Transparency Council to find out these data.
Boric’s activism for Mateluna
“I am fully convinced of Jorge’s innocence and that is why we have carried out this pardon.”
Everything indicates that these words by President Boric were sincere and that for him, Jorge, the former frontista Jorge Mateluna, sentenced to 16 years in prison for an armed attack on a bank, should not be in jail.
As revealed by the El Líbero site, Boric visited him in the High Security prison in Santiago, before August 2017, when he was a deputy. The site also reveals a video from the Libertad Jorge Mateluna Facebook account, which shows the then deputy Boric affirming that “it is necessary to fight in all possible instances so that this injustice is repaired.”
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Lawyers add new criticism of the Government for controversial pardons