Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Bachelet's speech

Boz has links to President Bachelet’s speech yesterday. The two points she had were that Chile’s surplus should be aimed at social spending, and so she announced a large spending increase ($750 million) and that political debate needs to be toned down. The right, of course, immediately criticized the spending, while members of the Concertación gave what seemed like fairly lukewarm praise. From Sergio Bitar (PPD):

La Presidenta no lo ha pasado bien este tiempo. Acá hay un camino, hay que ayudarla y apoyarla por el bien de Chile. Es nuestra obligación, como presidentes de partido, mostrarle unidad al país.

In other words, we ought to support the president because we need to show unity, not because we think she has good plans or is doing a good job. But let’s wait and see what the country thinks once some new poll numbers are out.

2 comments:

Experimentador 10:31 AM  

Interesting...

Re Chilean politics: Have you checked out Pato Navia's blog?

http://blogo.cl/roller/page/patonavia

He´s a Chilean political scientist who has turned into a professional "opinionator." He used to be a concertacionista, but lately he looks like he is closer to la Alianza (I don't buy the neutrality argument...).
I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but the blog is quite interesting and insightful.

Greg Weeks 12:28 PM  

Thanks, I didn't know he had a blog. I was on a LASA panel with him a few years ago.

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