Military legacies in Chile
The Chilean Congress is starting to debate the removal of military representatives from the National Television Council, which itself is a product of the latter part of the Pinochet government and was meant to act as a television moral watchdog. Three things come to mind.
First, this is a matter of very low salience to the armed forces so I'd be surprised if they offer any resistance.
Second, to my knowledge over the past 18 years the military has made no effort to affect any decision the organization has made (I wonder if officers even attend regularly) but it is the type of law that could easily be abused under certain circumstances. Every country, but especially those with dictatorship-era laws still on the books, should do the equivalent of a computer virus scan to make sure all obscure and potentially nasty laws are discovered and removed.
Third, it is really absurd that it took 18 years to do this. Better late than never.
1 comments:
I still believe that none of this would have happened if it hadn't been for Pinochet being arrested in London and the Lagos administration put in the position of saying that they could try Pinochet in Chile.
Not that they did, but look at what happened after he returned: the corruption investigations, the successful argument that disappearances constituted an ongoing crime and was not covered under the 1978 amnesty, the stripping away of immunity, the ending of the senator-for-life position, etc.
Now if they can only get the military off the CODELCO teat . . .
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