“Don’t expect this bloc to be stuck in parliament. We will have both feet and all our soul on the streets”. With these words by Deputy Pamela Jiles, the first press gathering with the Humanist Party bloc took place in Santiago. Besides the distinguished journalist were also gathered two other elected deputies: Tomás Hirsch and Florcita Motuda; the President of the Humanist Party, Octavio González; and the country’s youngest regional councillor, Fernanda Ortiz.
“We will work seriously in the legislature, but we are clear that in this country, the most important thing is what happens on the street, in the market, in homes, and the places where people are. It’s here that we’ll make our strongest efforts,” said Jiles, continuing that for the bloc, “the priority and main objective is the demilitarisation of the lands inhabited by the indigenous population.”
Likewise, the three new parliamentarians promised to be in government with their Frente Amplio partners in four years’ time. “We have committed ourselves and we will be in government,” assured singer Raúl Alarcón – better known as Florcita Motuda, the important anti-dictatorship singer of the 1980s, and the now Humanist Party deputy – thanks to the political inspiration that will appear around us, the same inspiration experienced by poets, scientists, and doctors when searching for something that makes life better for people, for something that makes pain and suffering subside.” In this context, the new deputy called the bloc “mystical-political, due to the joy and profoundness that we have in a party which is something more than a party.”
“Our task isn’t in Parliament: we haven’t been elected to raise our hands and vote for one thing or another, we are going to be in Parliament in order to continue working with the social, cultural, feminist and indigenous peoples’ organisations, with the people in different territories and districts,” added Tomás Hirsch, also expressing the intention of humanists to work intensively for the feminisation of politics. “We are going to draw inspiration from our first deputy, Laura Rodriguez (the first ever Humanist Party deputy who was elected in 1990 and sadly died in 1993), and on the 11th of March we will enter parliament, but with our backs to parliament and our faces towards the people.”
Regarding the role of the Humanist Party in the Broad Front, Hirsch explained, “Here we are and here we have been for over thirty years fighting to build a fairer and more democratic country, always forming different alliances with other political and social organisations. And now in the Broad Front we are working together on a bigger project, one that goes way beyond what has happened in these weeks in Chile and which has to do with the construction of a country that really guarantees Rights for all; a country in which there is real democracy; a country in which men and women, young and old, people from other countries and those born here have the right to be able to live a full life; a country that stops treating people badly and becomes a country that treats people well.”
Concluding the press conference, the new Humanist Party bloc reaffirmed its intention to fulfil “to the letter” the joint agreement about the freedom of action in the run-off election to decide who will be the president this weekend. “Sometimes the Humanist way of doing things is strange, perhaps we see things through rose-tinted-glasses, but we are looking towards what we aspire to be the political future. We believe that decisions taken together are more important than the particular needs. We continue to believe that one’s vote is personal, each one of us will make our own decision, some have expressed it through social networks, others haven’t, and we believe that there’s no ambiguity here and that this belongs to the field of personal action.”
