MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
The HydroAysén project and why Chile’s old institutional order can’t cope with change
By José Aylwin - The Santiago Times Publisher Steve Anderson’s editorial note: There are many reasons for the ongoing Chilean national anguish about the US$7.5 billion HidroAysén dam in Patagonia and transmission line project. Read full article
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Disclaimer & comment rules“a broad, multi-cultural citizen’s movement
May 23rd, 2011 - 01:11 am - Link - Report abuse 0that unites the progressive sectors of our country:
a movement that will democratically produce a social contract
that will result in a new political order for our country”
Sounds to me that this is a revolutionary tract attempting to trigger a new political revolution to overturn the present order,
using the building of a national hydroelectric scheme as the excuse to beat up the Government.
I've said it before on this topic - I don't like the extreme partiality of Mercopress reporting on this issue.
No balance whatsoever -
( Written by José Aylwin, who leads the NGO Observatorio Ciudadano, which aims to restore dignity and political power to local communities and ethnic groups);
and yet more seriously unethical knocking-copy using Pinochet/military dictatorship imagery of many years age to colour the issue.
Totally unacceptible Mercopress reporting.
Chile has less carbon-based energy reserves than most and needs the 'free' alternative energy that the gravitational fall of water can provide.
Movement towards a first world country needs energy - or perhaps the 'green left' would like to revert it to third-world.
good analitics, Geoff. You got the point 100%, something even most Chileans didn't realize yet.
May 23rd, 2011 - 02:53 pm - Link - Report abuse 0It's a very cyinical situation, whereas the big movement, who does raise critics on this project, are themself the DESIGNERS of it!
Again, like in few other past cases, the Hydroaysen project is something the previous government (Concertacion) planned, and now as opposition pretends not to have anything to do with... Ricardo Lagos is the allegory for this situation. On Sunday one week ago, he still openly defended the project, one day later, in an online publication, he denied and opposed to it.
Where was the big mass movement in the streets, when the Concertacion was planning this? Where was the big mass movement in the streets, when the Concertacion built about 20 horribly polluting coal-fired power plants in the 20 years of concertacion? Where was the Allende-truth comitee in those 20 years, who NOW wants to “really find out” if Allende commited suicide? (When even family members and closest friends in the palace said he DID)
Big stage, big theatre...
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