On July 26, the commune of Recoleta in Santiago, Chile, will be forced to elect a new mayor to replace Daniel Jadue, who is currently in preventive prison. As the now ex-mayor was unable to report to work for 45 days because he was incarcerated, an automatic institutional mechanism was applied that removed him from the mayor’s office, even though his guilt had not been proven by the prosecutor’s office. In this regard, the Mayor’s Office of Recoleta issued a statement in which it regrets “that a disproportionate precautionary measure takes away the quality of Mayor from someone who was elected by a large majority of the citizens of Recoleta, affecting the popular will and the democratic processes that currently govern our country.”
The Chilean justice system accuses him, along with seven other people, of tax fraud, swindling, concealment of assets, bribery, and unfair administration. Jadue was arrested and put in preventative detention on June 3. According to the prosecution, Jadue allegedly committed these acts when he was president of the Association of Municipalities with People’s Pharmacies (Achifarp). However, several people question whether the accusation is just another judicial investigation or whether, on the contrary, it is a new case of lawfare, i.e. political persecution through the ordinary justice system.
Achifarp vs. Best Quality: crime or political persecution?
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, ARCHIFARP allegedly purchased sanitary supplies during the pandemic from the company Best Quality. Best Quality had filed a lawsuit for fraud against ACHIFARP, insisting that the company had sold supplies to the association and were not paid for it and that there was an existing 1 million dollar debt. From there, thanks to the statement of a Best Quality salesman named César Ramírez, the prosecutor’s office began to investigate whether Jadue and seven other people had allegedly requested payments to award several bids in favor of different companies.
However, Jadue’s defense claims that these statements are not true, that the alleged evidence against him is fabricated, and that it is rather a political persecution against a communist politician who dared to challenge the economic benefit of the large pharmaceutical distributors in Chile.
Regarding the Best Quality case, Jadue affirmed that “everything that is said about alleged donations is completely false. It is a vendetta of a supplier who lost a lot of money for being an abusive company, it is of a confessed swindler known in our country who invents this to extort us and threaten to damage the presidential candidacy if we did not pay him immediately an unpayable debt…It is an invention of Cesar Ramirez and all the people who make this accusation just to try to force us to pay something we could not.”
For Jadue, it is “strange” that the investigation has begun precisely during a year in which there will be regional elections in Chile, which could be seen as an attempt not only to remove the most successful communist politician in the country but also to damage the electoral growth that the Communist Party of Chile had maintained during the last few years. In this regard, Jadue affirmed that “Can anyone think that with the attention of the public prosecutor’s office always on our administration we would commit illicit acts that would jeopardize such a wonderful project [as the Farmacias Populares] that has improved the quality of life of thousands of people? This accusation could have happened years ago or several months after the elections. But the accusation is made ‘coincidentally’ in the middle of an election year.”
On this matter, sociologist José Salvador Cárcamo, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, stated that Jadue’s case represents persecution against a mayor who threatened important economic and political interests: “Lawfare has moved to Chile… [The Farmacias Populares project] affected oligopolistic and monopolistic interests that acted as cartels through three pharmacy chains that concentrated 90% of the market: Cruz Verde, Farmacias Ahumada, and Salcobrand.”
The rise of a communist politician in a neoliberal state
For several years, Jadue has risen to become one of the most popular figures in the Chilean Communist Party. In 2021, he ran against Gabriel Boric in the primaries of the left-wing coalition to determine who would run for president. Jadue first became more widely recognized when he was elected in 2012 as mayor of Recoleta with 41.68% of the votes, and re-elected thanks to an overwhelming endorsement on two occasions: in 2016 (56.16% support) and in 2021 (64.08% support).
The success of his administration was based on the social programs he has implemented to favor access to health, education, and the consumption of cultural activities for the poorest, such as the Open Schools, Health Clinics, People’s Real Estate, the Open University of Recoleta, the People’s Bookstore, the energy program for the neediest, dentists who give care to the poor, the People’s School of Theater, etc. But undoubtedly, his star program was the People’s Pharmacies.
People’s Pharmacies: a successful alternative health care model
In 2015 Jadue inaugurated the first People’s Pharmacy, where many medicines, including those that the poorest could not afford to buy, were sold at a subsidized rate, thanks to the support of the mayor’s office. Since healthcare in Chile is almost entirely privatized, the People’s Pharmacies saw a price reduction of almost 70% of many medicines. Thanks to the support of the Public Health Institute, other People’s Pharmacies appeared not only in Recoleta but also in many other municipalities that replicated the model proposed by Jadue. Over time, several users demonstrated that the price differences between the People’s Pharmacies and the large stores that sell medicines are abysmal: in some cases, the prices in the People’s Pharmacies were almost 1000% cheaper.
The project succeeded in lowering prices because the municipalities were in charge of buying the drugs directly from the producers and then selling them to the citizens at a fair price. The lesson was that the intermediary companies were charging huge amounts of money. If this was so, why shouldn’t the state “help” citizens who could not afford the more expensive drugs? The project was massively supported: by 2016 more than 50 communes implemented the People’s Pharmacies model; in 2017 there were more than 86. However, several Chilean laboratories tried to boycott the People’s Pharmacies by raising the prices of the medicines they sold to the State. The boycott was uncovered by the Institute of Public Health and Jadue.
Is there hope for Jadue’s release?
According to several people close to Jadue’s defense, although his removal as mayor has been achieved, a new possibility to obtain his freedom has now been opened. The judge ordered the preventive detention, among other things, based on a possible “risk of repetition” of the crimes that the prosecution accuses him of. However, since he is no longer mayor, this alleged danger is meaningless. The defense thus hopes to obtain the release of the most popular Chilean communist politician of the moment.
