00:00Chile's National Congress approved on Tuesday the economic megaproject promoted by far-right
00:05president José Antonio Cast, which favours foreign investments and the nation's millionaires
00:10and dispense social benefits for the majority.
00:13The Chamber approved 27 of the Senate, 28 amendments during the Bill's third legislative
00:18stage in Santiago de Chile.
00:21Cast's neoliberal project consistently reduces several taxes on large corporations and the
00:26super-rich establishes a tax invariability considered undemocratic and authoritarian,
00:33supports foreign investors by guaranteeing them compensation-restates the tax system and
00:39temporarily reduces the inheritance tax and capital repatriation.
00:43In a sense, the opposition has already announced plans to raise constitutional objections to
00:48at least 12 of the 28 Senate amendments citing unjustified privileges for financers and big
00:55businessmen and the transgressions of legal norms.
01:05For the part, the legislative forces of progressivism and left-wing representatives strongly oppose
01:10President Cast's neoliberal project in Chile's Congress, arguing that it only benefits the
01:15top one percent in detriment of the majority of Chilean society.
01:21I have come to denounce a lie, the lie that this bill helps Chile.
01:25It is a bill that is not going to help small and medium-sized businesses.
01:29It is not going to help small shops.
01:30It is not going to help the families who get up day after day looking for a new opportunity.
01:35On the contrary, it is a reform aimed at President Cast, his businessman friends, and
01:40the financiers of the Republican Party.
01:42It is a bill that uses the pain of families waiting for reconstruction to introduce a tax reform
01:47that is only ideological and does nothing to help the situation of Chile today.
01:52Who does it benefit?
01:53The ministers of this government who are not going to pay property taxes.
02:00This is a bad bill because it does not think about 99 percent of Chileans and, as it is
02:06proposed, it grants benefits exceeding $4 billion to the richest 1 percent in the country.
02:11They sought to cover the financial hole by indebting the country, but even more relentless is this
02:16government that makes us come vote while half the country is underwater.
02:20I wonder whether the government has really listened to Chileans.
02:27I do not know what level of human misery we are facing.
02:36I do not think it is right that in this Congress we are capable of voting for a reform that
02:45enriches
02:46the 1 percent, who already obscenely have their coffers full of money from the work of the immense
02:53majority of us.
02:57Are you not ashamed that people cannot get health care, or that workers' families cannot
03:05send their girls to be educated because it is not a right?
03:10Are you not ashamed of so much greed and so much human misery?
