Chilean Comptroller gives Boric five days to defend himself against accusations of interventionism in the referendum

Chile’s Comptroller’s Office has granted the country’s president, Gabriel Boric, a period of five days to explain his coordination meeting with members of the Socialist Party (PS) in order to promote the ‘Yes’ vote in the constitutional referendum in September, which the opposition has denounced for possible interventionism.

The benches of Renovación Nacional (RN) and Evolución Política (Evópoli) requested on Monday to the Comptroller’s Office an investigation for the meeting of the president with members of the PS which, according to a publication of Leonardo Soto, deputy of said formation, was a “coordination meeting to be able to support with greater strength and greater coordination the ‘Apruebo’ option”.

Despite the fact that Soto himself removed the publication and apologized for what he qualified as a “mistake”, members of up to three political formations have filed complaints to the Comptroller’s Office, which has motivated the agency to, effectively, push forward the investigation.

“We take this opportunity to thank Congressman Leonardo Soto, because if it were not for his video we would not have known that the President of the Republic had taken a step further,” ironized on Monday the secretary general of RN, Diego Schalper, who directly accused Boric of intervening in the referendum process and having turned the offices of the Presidency into a “campaign command”.

The population of Chile is called to the polls next September 4 to vote in a referendum on the text agreed by the Constitutional Convention. According to the recent survey Pulso Ciudadano, published by Radio Bío Bío, the ‘No’ would be 55.7 percent ahead of the ‘Yes’, which would gather 44.3 percent of the remaining support.