Jeanette Vega, Chilean minister of social development, has resigned. Source AFP
Due to the scandal revealed in Chile over the theft of timber that led to the arrest of the radical Mapuche leader Héctor Llaitul, Minister of Social Development, Jeanette Vegahe resigned after it leaked one of his advisers contacted him Recently.
He is the first official to step down from the presidency of Gabriele Boricpresident who on Thursday announced that he had formally accepted his resignation.
“I have decided to accept the resignation of the Minister of Social Development, Jeannette Vega”, confirmed the Chilean president during a tour in the north of the country.
Vega, 64 and linked to the Social Democrat Party for Democracy (PPD)leaves Boric’s cabinet five months after taking office e ten days before the plebiscite in which the Chileans will decide whether to approve the proposed reform of what the ruling party proclaims as a new Constitution.
Local media Ex-Ante revealed a report by the Chilean Investigative Police (PDI) indicating that an official from the Ministry of Social Development contacted Llaitul in May to try to schedule a conversation with Vega.
The communication took place the same morning that the leader of the Arauco-Malleco coordinator (CAM), one of the main ones radical Mapuche organizations operating in southern Chile, he asked to “organize the armed resistance“in response to the militarization of the area that Boric had decreed.
«We have to pay attention to the substance and also to the form. The facts we have known make it correspond affirm political responsibility of the minister “, clarified Boric, who announced that Undersecretary Paula Poblete will take up the interim post.
It is not the first controversy in which Vega is involved, who in May, days after the contact between her adviser and Llaitul, recognized on local television that there are Mapuche political prisoners in Chile.
His remarks went on to wave of criticism, including in the ruling party, and the former minister had to rectify his words hours later.
Incarceration of the radical Mapuche leader Héctor Llaitul
A court ruled on Thursday pre-trial detention for Llaitularrested the day before for the alleged crimes of “theft of wood, usurpation and attack on authority“and moved to Temuco, the capital of the Araucanía region, 700 kilometers south of Santiago.
There and in other southern areas, the so-called Mapuche conflict has existed for decades, a territorial dispute between the state, radicalized indigenous communities and forestry companies that exploit lands believed to be ancestral.
The theft of wood, one of the alleged crimes that led to Llaitul’s arrest, is, according to experts, a complex network involving armed groups such as the one led by the inmate, but also other necessary companies and actors, some of which are dedicated to the wood sector.
A nebulous network that starts up the moment you trucks with large logs are robbed on the street or at the gates of the fields, which needs specialized sawmills to reduce the load and brokers for the sale of a product that can only be placed in a very small market.
In this context, arson attacks on machinery and property and roadblocks occur almost daily – many of which are claimed by the CAM – and periodically also occur deadly shootings.
“The signs must be clear: yes to dialogue, no to violence. Those who do not understand this fundamental premise have the duty to confront the institutions of the rule of law that we in the government will defend”, warned Boric.
Source: agencies.
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Source: Clarin
