Boric blames the failure of the tax reform in Congress on the right

Chilean President Gabriel Boric in an act at the University of Chile on March 6. Ailen Diaz (EFEW)

One day after the Chamber of Deputies rejected the tax reform project presented by the leftist government of President Gabriel Boric, which sought to collect 3.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), some 10,000 million dollars, the Executive endorsed the responsibility of his legislative failure to the right.

In particular, former president Sebastián Piñera, who reappeared over the weekend in a political program on Channel 13, and criticized the initiative.

The Government required 74 votes for the idea of ​​legislating to be approved, which is the first bill in Parliament, but it achieved 73. The rejections were 71 and the abstentions, three.

"It has been a blow to hope, but Chile must recover from these trifles," Boric said last night from a tour in northern Chile.

The fall of the tax reform, key to financing the Executive program, is considered the main legislative defeat of the Boric government.

Although the entire right voted against it, there were also three left-wing deputies who, despite being present in the Chamber, did not go to vote.

There was an altercation that one of them had with the Minister of Education, Marco Antonio Ávila.

The attack against the right came early in the morning from the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, and the Government spokesperson, Camila Vallejo.

“President Piñera appeared two days ago, why now after a year of not appearing?

He appears just at that moment to prevent Chile from advancing in a reform, but we cannot fall into that guerrilla now, ”Tohá said in an interview with Meganoticias.

Meanwhile, Vallejo, on Radio Cooperativa, pointed out that "there is an intention to maintain the

regarding tax issues, and the interview with former president Sebastián Piñera the previous weekend was not by chance, rejecting, among other things, the tax proposal .

There was an alignment, a change of tone of the opposition regarding this”.

Sebastián Piñera has governed Chile in two periods, the last one prior to Boric's mandate.

On Sunday he questioned the two emblematic reforms of the Government, the tax and the pensions, which are led by the Minister of Finance, the socialist Mario Marcel, who is the best evaluated in the Cabinet.

The former president pointed out that both "have glaring flaws that must be corrected."

Regarding the tax initiative, Piñera stated that it is a mistake "to try to increase taxes by that magnitude, which would be 3.6% of GDP, that is, 25% more than what we have today in the midst of an economy that is stagnant, with a growth crisis and that is not capable of creating employment”.

And he added: “It is very important that the tax reform, in addition to collecting, promotes innovation, entrepreneurship, investment, and economic growth.

This project does very little in that regard.”

Government avoids mea culpa

After the legislative defeat, which occurred on the eve of Boric's first year in power, the ruling party cannot resubmit the reform in the Chamber of Deputies.

But he still has the chance to try it in the Senate, where he doesn't have a majority.

In Boric's first appearance after the setback, in which he was obviously hurt and annoyed, he did not clarify which path they would take, but he opened up new paths: “Our Government will continue to govern.

In no case will it fall into immobility and it will find the way to enable a serious debate in Parliament and, thus, make the tax reform that Chile needs a reality”.

In the political committee of La Moneda, some alternatives to the fall of the reform were evaluated during the more than three hours that the meeting lasted.

After that appointment, Minister Marcel, when asked if the Government made a mea culpa for not having obtained the votes in the Lower House, said that "the responsibility for what happened yesterday does not lie with the Government, because the Government did not press the button to press rejection of the idea of ​​legislating.

The men and women parliamentarians were responsible for that decision.”

The spokesperson Camila Vallejo endorsed it: "The responsibility for the consequences of having rejected the idea of ​​legislating the tax reform lies with those who voted against it."

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