Before February’s devastating earthquake, Fernando Echeverria ran a major construction company and led Chile’s powerful chamber of builders, which successfully lobbied against government inspections that would have made companies like his more accountable for faulty structures.
Now, despite the failure of three of his newer buildings in the magnitude 8.8 temblor, Echeverria leads the reconstruction of Chile’s urban Santiago region as the governor appointed by Chilean President Sebastian Pinera.
It’s one of numerous potential conflicts the conservative president has created in his zeal to run the reconstruction like the private ventures that made him a billionaire.
Pinera also gave US$15 million in no-bid contracts to three giant building-supply companies formerly run or represented by Cabinet members and another political appointee — cutting out local vendors who desperately needed the sales after the quake. And he’s given private construction firms a leading role in designing new master plans for destroyed cities.
“It’s a betrayal, I would say,” said Pedro Poblete, who leads a group of neighborhood associations in the Maule region, where the quake crumbled the capital of Talca and released a tsunami that destroyed 80 percent of the heart of coastal Constitucion.
Pinera all but dismissed the potential for conflicts of interest from his appointees — nearly all from top corporate ranks — who now make decisions that could affect the bottom lines of their former companies. By sidestepping bureaucracy and demanding quick results, he delivered shelters and schools ahead of schedule after the Feb. 27 quake, which killed 521 people, left more than 200,000 homeless and caused US$30 billion in damage.
“In life one always faces conflicts of interest — only the dead and the saints are removed from this situation,” he told a reporter for Argentina’s Clarin newspaper. “The important thing is to know how to resolve it correctly.”
His government has responded to the criticisms in part by adding transparency to a new tax law designed to encourage corporate donations for reconstruction, and by offering thousands of small cash subsidies to people in shelters.
However, Chileans accustomed to 20 straight years of center-left rule remain suspicious of the heavy corporate role. Political power is already highly concentrated in Chile, where the president appoints not only Cabinet ministers and agency leaders but governors as well.
Now Chile’s economic and political powers are combined in a way not seen since the 1973 to 1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who was supported by the same right-wing parties Pinera returned to the executive branch.
Under Pinochet, builders persuaded authorities to eliminate government construction-site inspections, and cities lost their capacity to enforce the codes.
It took 15 years of democracy to restore some protections as part of Chile’s much-vaunted magnitude 9 earthquake standard adopted in 2005. But lobbying by the builders chamber, led by Echeverria from 2002 to 2004, contributed to some gaping holes: Companies pay for private site studies by third-party engineers, who aren’t clearly held responsible for their results, and cities are ill-equipped to ensure buildings were built according to the plans.
Most modern construction withstood the quake, but about 40 recently built multistory buildings failed, killing eight and leaving hundreds homeless. Two of Echeverria’s apartment buildings were left uninhabitable and a third has to be demolished.
Even Pinera’s Housing and Urban Development Minister Magdalena Matte says the quake exposed the need for stronger regulations.
“The most important thing we have to do as a ministry is to set new standards so this never happens again,” Matte said. “Because right now, no one is responsible.”
Echeverria, who like all Pinera appointees resigned from his private positions to take the government job, has refused to address residents who fear he won’t take responsibility for the damage.
He said through a government spokesman that he won’t comment on his private-sector past — even though he just left his job in March.
“He has removed himself from the businesses and sold his stock,” spokesman Rodrigo Miranda said. “He will not make any comments about his previous participation in construction.”
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
OUTRAGE: The former strongman was accused of corruption and responsibility for the killings of hundreds of thousands of political opponents during his time in office Indonesia yesterday awarded the title of national hero to late president Suharto, provoking outrage from rights groups who said the move was an attempt to whitewash decades of human rights abuses and corruption that took place during his 32 years in power. Suharto was a US ally during the Cold War who presided over decades of authoritarian rule, during which up to 1 million political opponents were killed, until he was toppled by protests in 1998. He was one of 10 people recognized by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto in a televised ceremony held at the presidential palace in Jakarta to mark National
US President Donald Trump handed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a one-year exemption from sanctions for buying Russian oil and gas after the close right-wing allies held a chummy White House meeting on Friday. Trump slapped sanctions on Moscow’s two largest oil companies last month after losing patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin over his refusal to end the nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. However, while Trump has pushed other European countries to stop buying oil that he says funds Moscow’s war machine, Orban used his first trip to the White House since Trump’s return to power to push for
LANDMARK: After first meeting Trump in Riyadh in May, al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House today would be the first by a Syrian leader since the country’s independence Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the US on Saturday for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency SANA reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted long-time former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet US President Donald Trump at the White House today. It is the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts. The interim leader met Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the US president’s regional tour in May. US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack earlier
RSS