One thing, it seems, will mark a before and after in these municipal elections, and that is the amount of money spent by the candidates in their campaigns, which according to the commercial engineer, director of Chile Transparente, and commercial manager of BH Compliance, Susana Sierra, “at first sight it can be seen that they spent much less than other years, many took money out of their own pockets”.
However, according to an expert in good corporate practices, “what worries me is that I have not seen the candidates talking about how they are going to worry about fighting corruption in their communities since it is a fundamental issue. None of the candidates came out with concrete proposals that they are going to worry about this issue, we continue with the same messages”.
-What do you think about the fact that some candidates are being investigated for possible corruption cases?
-That is the most unusual thing, we have to call on people to investigate a little more, there is information on the Internet because memory is very fragile, these candidates who were investigated and then run for office, bet that people will forget later. Therefore, each one in their communes should see what has been done and how it has been done, they should look at the communal corruption issues.
-These issues affect participation.
-In any case, and this is a call to vote if people do not vote, then how will they have the right to argue, and a vote today, due to the low participation, can weigh much more.
Susana Sierra emphasizes that “if people reward with their vote those who are more transparent, that itself will be an incentive for the candidate to be more transparent, but as people do not get involved, do not look, do not reward, then the candidate says why am I going to spend time doing all this paperwork if people do not look at him”.
-His diagnosis sounds pessimistic.
-I am pessimistic about this, I don’t see the change.
And he adds that “the mayor has a fundamental role, and the councilors also have a very important role in supervising the mayor. The councilman should stand up and say: “I am going to regulate the mayor”. But it is the other way around, they all appear in the photo next to the mayor. What confidence can a councilman give you like that? Is that councilman going to dare to tell the mayor that this is wrong?
