SANTIAGO – As a further response to the population’s demands, President Sebastián Piñera has asked all of the ministers in his cabinet to resign. The measure will help the government better attend to the country’s needs, he said. His request comes the day after “the largest march in Chile,” where more than 1 million people gathered in Santiago alone.
Today, President Piñera attended a meeting to discuss new plans and decisions with respect to the social crisis that has gripped Chile for more than a week.
“I have asked all ministers to [give up their seats], to structure a new cabinet to face these new demands and make ourselves responsible to these new times,” Piñera said, according to Cooperativa. A change of ministers would allow the government to better tackle the population’s demands, he explained.
Piñera made these declarations to various organization and union representatives that he had summoned to discuss the current crisis.
The president also indicated that, at midnight on Oct. 28, he would lift the remaining states of emergency that cover several regions, “with the purpose of contributing to the normality many Chileans want and deserve,” as he explained in Cooperativa.
Deaths and Justifications
Piñera also said that one of the main focuses of the government’s next actions, would be to “end the destruction and the looting” which had caused the loss of innocent lives, as reported by Cooperativa.
During the meeting, the president also asked for a “minute of silence” for the people who had lost their lives during the violence of the last days. “They were people that had nothing to do [with it] … All lives are valuable, and all those lost lives hurt us,” he said—a controversial statement to many, as some of those deaths allegedly have been caused by the police or military, whose actions, in turn, are blamed on the government’s orders.
The president again defended his intentions and actions, however, saying that the military forces were there to “restore the public order, civic security, and to assure every freedom and right to the Chileans.”
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Promises That There Will be Change
The meeting in which the president asked his entire cabinet to resign was held the day after the “largest march in Chile,” a massive demonstration that gathered more than a million people in Santiago alone, beginning at 5 p.m. on Oct. 25.
The peaceful protest is to many a clear sign of the country’s unity against inequalities, injustices, and political abuses that Piñera promises to tackle.
“It was a massive march, joyful, peaceful, which opens wide our ways to future and hope. We have all listened to the message. We have all changed. Now, we have to unite forces to give true, urgent, responsible answers to these social demands from all Chileans,” the president said, referring to the march, the crisis, and his future actions, as reported by Express.
Editor-In-Chief Boris van der Spek is the founder of Chile Today.