Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Right-wing political support for the 1973 Chilean coup

This page has been treated as if it contained libellous material or illegal content. The title has no major bias attached to it; it is as biased as saying, Left-wing political opposition to the Pinochet regime. Rather than attach a tag for speedy deletion the article should have had a tag suggesting the page be extended.

The editor who nominated it for speedy deletion doesn’t even understand that the terms “right” and “left” in politics are not concrete but relative to the context of a given political event or development. Likeminas commented on the page’s discussion:


 * I should also point out that, yes, indeed there's a political agenda behind the creation of this article, othwerwise, why would you name it Right-wing political support especially when one of the biggest parties of Chile the Christian Democrat Party, a left-leaning party, did support many of the measures mentioned in the article? 

Forward
I’ll skip over the role the ultra-right-wing Fatherland and Freedom party played in destabilizing Chile between 1970-1973. (and how this party became the recruiting ground for Pinochet’s murderous secret police.)

Within the context of Chile (1970-1973) the Christian democratic party (Chile) underwent a major right-wing shift which saw whole segments of its membership either leave the party or/to form and join MAPU or Christians for Socialism.

Confederation for Democracy (CODE)
Furthermore, the Christian democrats spearheaded a Confederation for Democracy (CODE) which confederated all the political parties of the right into two federations that exploited a 1972 Act passed by Chile’s Election Examination Tribunal (which had lifted a ban on the formation of electoral coalitions in congressional elections), to win 2/3 of the Chilean deputies in the senate that they needed to constitutionally impeach and remove Allende – however they won a simple majority but not the 2/3 of the seats. The confederation for democracy dissolved itself in acknowledgment that an attempt to defeat Allende within the legal framework provided by the Chilean constitution was no longer feasible and viable.

A congressional boycott of the Allende government
As is often the case in representative parliamentary democracy the congress under the Socialist government of Allende ended up being dominated by his political opponents: the centre-right alliance of the Christian democrat and the National Party with a simple majority. After May 23, 1973 with Eduardo Frei as president of Chile’s National Congress all the bills initiated by the Popular Unity government were blocked. Not only did the centre-right-wing dominated congress deny Allende the right to govern but they began to upturn all that which the government had achieved by cutting funds to bills that had previously been enacted.

Unconstitutional declaration of the Chamber of Deputies
Once the Christian democrats and the National Party consolidated a boycott in the congress against the Allende government which lifted any power the government had to deal with the growing social crisis developing in the country - the political right officially breaks with the constitutional regime.

On August 22, 1973 Chile’s Chamber of Deputies launched a declaration in the form of Acuerdo de la cámara de Diputados sobre el grave quebrantamiento del orden constitucional y legal de la República. (Agreement of the Chamber of Deputies on the break-up of the constitutional and legal order of the Republic).

This declaration had no legal or constitutional basis and proceeded from a failure by CODE to acquire 2/3 majority of deputies to constitutionally impeach and remove Salvador Allende from the presidency. This declaration was an official break from the constitutional regime by the right-wing political opposition controlling the senate and served as a green light for military intervention to resolve the political crisis.

The “constitutional resolutions”, the coup and a hazy public conscious
These “resolutions” or “declarations” presented out of context or disassociated from the failed political scheme of the Confederation for Democracy completely distorts an understanding of the political events leading up to the Chilean military coup. A whole segment of the generation of people who grew up under the Pinochet regime who formulate points of views with distorted or manipulated information often rationalize that Allende was overthrown for “violating the Chilean constitution” or was overthrown by the military for refusing to step down after the national congress had “constitutionally” removed him.

In reference to claims of “copy and paste” as a basis for deletion
This page is not a blatant “copy and paste” of the material in the Chilean coup because it has an introduction – the introduction in itself is evidence that the page was treating the material from a more objective perspective. To treat these resolutions for what they were and the purpose they served, as a political green light for the military overthrow of a government that had defeated his opponents constitutionally.

It is interesting how in English wikipedia these resolutions which are on wikisource have been presented and cited in a number of articles yet there are no pages detailing how these resolutions proceeded after an attempt by a confederation of right-wing political parties to depose and impeach Allende constitutionally failed.

Moreover, in English wikipedia there is not even a page for the Confederation for Democracy, nor pages for most of the right wing parties of the two federations that integrated it.

I rest my case
_Regards, Moshe-paz (talk) 16:39, 21 June 2009 (UTC)