International
“The Bukele recipe is not applicable to Santiago,” says its elected mayor, Mario Desbordes
Former minister and conservative deputy Mario Desbordes (Los Andes, 1968), dealt one of the most painful blows to the government of the progressive Gabriel Boric almost a month ago when it was made by more than 20 points of difference with the Mayor’s Office of Santiago de Chile, considered the ‘jewel of the crown’.
A little more than two weeks after taking office, on December 6, Desbordes attributes his resounding triumph against the communist Irací Hassler, who was seeking reelection, to his “moderate” profile, to the “gray hair” and to the “experience”.
“Santiago is not a commune for the tougher right,” he admits in an interview with EFE in an office in the Bellas Artes neighborhood, which has been his campaign bunker in recent months.
Old acquaintance in Chilean politics, he has done almost everything: he was undersecretary of Investigations in the first term of Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014) and minister of Defense in the second (2018-2022), presidential pre-candidate and deputy.
He was also an agent of the Carabineros police force and presided over National Renewal, one of the three parties that make up the Chile Vamos coalition.
Governing the historic center of Santiago, a commune of 600,000 inhabitants, which in recent years has become very multicultural and where no mayor has been re-elected since 1996, is possibly one of the biggest challenges of his career.
The Santiago de Chile that receives Desbordes
Desbordes inherits a city that is going through one of its worst moments, with high crime rates and great deterioration of public spaces, where life on the street ends almost when the sun goes down and countless businesses have closed.
The problems come from afar, but they were aggravated with the protests of 2019 and the pandemic to the point that, regrets Desbordes, “the center of Santiago has moved emotionally to Providencia,” the adjacent neighborhood.
“The dirt, the scratches on the walls, prostitution in the Plaza de Armas in the morning, street commerce… There is a whole set of incivilities… I think Santiago looks a lot like New York in the early 90s,” he admits.
In 2023, Santiago recorded a total of 66 homicides, becoming for the fifth consecutive year the commune with the most victims in the country, and a homicide rate of 12.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, double the national average (6.3), according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Despite the fact that more and more voices call for a heavy hand and look towards El Salvador, Desbordes assures that “the Bukele recipe is not applicable” because “Chile has another reality.”
Anyway, the elected mayor asks “to be very careful about criticizing Bukele without being in the shoes of Salvadorans who can only now go out on the street quietly.”
“I am not a friend of criminal populism that states that everyone has to go to jail and put a tank in every corner, nor of criminal goodism, which says that crime is a victim of us and in the end the bad guys are us. I think there is a middle ground,” he emphasizes.
“Clean, illuminate and paint”
That intermediate, in his opinion, is the so-called “Theory of Broken Windows”, the same that former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his Chief of Police, William Bratton, applied in New York three decades ago and that says that if there is a broken window and it is not fixed, the rest end up being destroyed.
Desbordes proposes, in that sense, “to clean, illuminate, paint, put cameras, work with the community and recover the presence of the State,” in such a way that the city “is an uncomfortable place for those who infringe.”
In a conciliatory tone that contrasts with the political tension that Chile is experiencing, the elected mayor has already met with the Boric Government and is convinced that the solution also involves working in a coordinated manner with the different administrations, even if they are in “the ideological antipodes.”
“One of the complaints of the citizens is that politicians are dedicated to fighting like cat and dog and there are never agreements. When citizens lose confidence in politics and politicians, they are more likely to vote for populist and authoritarian people,” he says.
Representative of the so-called “social right”, the most moderate soul within Chile Vamos, Desbordes says that his reference is the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel or the Popular Party in Spain and that he is not in favor of radicalizing the coalition to avoid the flight of votes towards the thriving ultra-right.
“We cannot lose the center. Our main adversaries are the Broad Front (of Boric) and the Communist Party. That’s where the cultural and political struggle is.”
International
At least 120 dead in the Gaza Strip in the last 48 hours from Israeli attacks
At least 120 Palestinians have died in the Gaza Strip in the last 48 hours from Israeli attacks and the death toll since the war began amounts to 44,176, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, controlled by Hamas.
In the case of the injured, the ministry confirmed 205 in the last two days and in total since the war began, on October 7, 2023, they total 104,473, according to that count.
In addition, it is estimated that there are 11,000 missing people under the rubble.
Offensive in Yabalia and Beit Lahia
Although fatalities have been recorded in different parts of the Strip, in the last 40 days Israel’s offensive has focused on the northern half, especially in the cities of Yabalia and Beit Lahia, with more than 2,300 dead since then, and more than 6,000 injured.
Kamal Adwan hospital has been attacked again after an Israeli drone destroyed the electric generator, water tank and oxygen tanks in the center yesterday, where 80 patients remain.
“It seems that there are no limits to the cruelty inflicted on the Palestinians in Gaza. For more than 40 days, the northern population is besieged: surrounded, bombed, deprived of the basic means of survival and forced to flee under threats,” denounced the head of the OCHA (UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs) office for Palestine, Jonathan Whittal.
Whittal said that his teams have been trying to access Yabalia, Beit Lahia and Beit Hanun, the most affected cities, for more than a month, but that the Israeli authorities have rejected all his requests.
“The result? People are under the rubble without being rescued. The sick and the wounded cannot reach the hospitals. Drinking water and food have run out. Lives have been lost,” he said.
International
At least 10 people died at the hands of strangers in a mosque in northern Afghanistan
At least 10 people were killed in an attack by unidentified armed men in a mosque in Baghlan province, in northern Afghanistan, Taliban government sources confirmed to EFE this Saturday.
The attack in the Nahrin district of Baghlan, northern Afghanistan, took place on Thursday night, according to Taliban government deputy spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat.
“Unfortunately, before last night (Thursday night) in a mosque and on a pilgrimage during the night, ten people who stayed for worship were killed by strangers,” he said.
Sufi communities in Afghanistan often spend nights in mosques as a worship practice.
Research to identify the authors
Fitrat assured that investigations are being carried out to identify and bring the perpetrators to justice for this “horrible incident,” for which no armed group has claimed authorship.
“The Islamic Emirate strongly condemns this terrible act and considers it an unforgivable crime,” added Fitrat, who blames extremist groups.
“This act was committed by those extremist groups that have no respect for the blood of other Muslims,” he condemned.
In the last three years, since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, ISIS-Khorasan, the Afghan branch of the jihadist group Islamic State- has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on minorities and members of the Taliban, becoming the country’s greatest security threat.
Minority groups such as the Hazara Shiite community and Sufi practitioners have been frequent targets of violence by extremist groups that try to impose a rigid interpretation of Islam.
The Taliban de facto government has insistently denied that the Islamic State is a security threat to Afghanistan or any other country, while the regime’s secrecy and iron controls on the press have cut off the flow of information on the country’s security situation.
International
Ukraine attacks the port of Berdyansk with missiles, according to pro-Russian authorities
The Ukrainian army attacked the port of Berdiansk, in the Sea of Azov, with missiles on Saturday, according to the pro-Russian authorities of the Zaporyy region today.
“The enemy perpetrated an attack with guided missiles against the port of Berdiansk. The fires caused by the impact have been suffocated,” reported the governor imposed by Moscow, Yevgueni Balitski, on his Telegram channel.
The governor, who was recently received in Moscow by Russian President Vladimir Putin, stressed that the attack did not cause injuries among the civilian population and did not interrupt the work of the port facilities.
In turn, he assured that anti-aircraft defenses continue to be on maximum alert, since new Ukrainian attacks against the city are not ruled out.
At the end of October Kiev had already attacked the strategic port under Russian control since 2022 with a dead old woman.
The Russian army controls more than 70% of Zaporiyia and tries to take control of the rest of the region as it advances at forced marches in neighboring Donetsk.
North Korean soldiers in the Belgorod region, according to Ukraine
Ukraine claims that North Korean soldiers, who until now were only in the Russian region of Kursk, were also transferred to Belgorod, which borders the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv.
“Some soldiers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea were transferred to the border of the Belgorod region,” the head of the Central Intelligence Department of the National Security and Defense Council, Andrí Kovalenko, wrote on Telegram.
The senior Ukrainian official stressed that “they are not in the Kharkiv region,” as some US media had reported based on Ukrainian sources.
The Kremlin rules out a second onde of mobilization
For its part, the Kremlin today ruled out a second wave of mobilization of reservists to fight in Ukraine with a view to the fourth year of fighting in the neighboring country.
“Our citizens very actively sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense,” Dmitri Peskov, presidential spokesman, told the official agency RIA Novosti.
Peskov stressed that volunteers carry out courses in which they are instructed “consciously,” so “now there is no need to talk about mobilization.”
“There are many, hundreds who sign contracts every day,” he added.
The Kremlin has refrained from declaring a new partial mobilization after the first one in September 2022 caused great popular discontent and the exodus of hundreds of thousands of military-age men.
1,000 days of combat
Fighting in Ukraine reached 1,000 days this week with Russian forces advancing in forced marches in the Donbas, although Moscow has not yet been able to expel Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region.
Ukraine hopes to slow down the current Russian offensive with Western authorization to use American and British long-range missiles against targets in Russian territory, which Kiev used against the Bryansk and Kursk regions.
Russia responded on Thursday by launching an Oreshnik hypersonic ballistic missile at an arms factory in the Ukrainian region of Dnipro.
In addition, on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that there will be more launches and announced the mass production of those new generation missiles capable of circumventing any Western missile shield.
At least 120 dead in the Gaza Strip in the last 48 hours from Israeli attacks
At least 10 people died at the hands of strangers in a mosque in northern Afghanistan
Ukraine attacks the port of Berdyansk with missiles, according to pro-Russian authorities
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