http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925
Speech in which Arturo Alessandri explains why he will not call for meetings of the national congress in 1925
The recent expression of some opinions about the wisdom of allowing the functioning of the Congress chosen in March of 1924 imposes on me the duty to share my point of view and resolve in the matter.
The Revolutionary Junta, which overthrew the Government of the Republic on September 11, 1924, declared the dissolution of the National Congress by decree on that same date.
In its final considerations and in its resolution, this law said “that under current circumstances consultation with the popular will is an imperious necessity.”
On the other hand, it is a matter of public notoriety that the voter registrations of this past November and the elections of March occurred in a way that cannot be considered a true reflection of popular will, to which the resolutions of the Electoral Review Commission give sufficient evidence. It is the Government’s decided purpose to realize this consultation of the nation’s popular will as soon as possible to guarantee the correct exercise of the right to elect:
In view of these grave considerations and in order to achieve the enunciated purposes, there is no other alternative to the dissolution of the National Congress. For these reasons we have agreed and we decree that:
1. The National Congress is declared dissolved.
2. The Minister of Interior will proceed to the study of the measures necessary to convene new elections for the people.
Once declared dissolved, the Congress did not protest or denounce that resolution. Public opinion was also silent and the measure was imposed in the whole country in an environment favorable to it, because it was considered that the regime was destined to be a failure, that it would impede the Nation’s progress and seriously damage her vital energies.
Public opinion did not view it as a necessary attack to end definitively a repudiated regime. The silence of public opinion and the acts and positive declarations, arisen from diverse political fields, justify this appraisal.
On September 19, that is, scarcely six days after the event, the “Executive Committee” that, by resolution of the General Junta, assumed the leadership of the Radical Party, said: “As for the Parliament, despite the violation of public law implied by its dissolution, it is necessary to confess that this measure was a source of national salvation; its destruction, in our judgment, has changed a ruinous regime and has cleared the field to implement in its place a better order of things.”
The president of the Conservative Party, Mr. Arthur Lyon, at the same time, interpreting the sentiments of his colleagues and the parties in his political coalition, in the Conservative Party’s http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925
Executive session on November 18, 1924, said: “The military movement occurred outside our sphere of action, but the purposes that instigated it perfectly coincide with the objectives of our program, with its desire for administrative regeneration, political reform, moral improvement, and material progress.
In effect, who can deny that the revolutionary movement has legitimated the campaign that the Conservative Party has advanced for more than three years in Congress and in the press; that it has brought prestige to the most eminent Conservatives; and that it has proven the excellence of its program’s fundamental principles?”
Furthermore, he adds: “It should be known that we have declared our solidarity with the military movement. We lament that this movement was necessary, but we recognize its necessity and we see it as a work of national salvation. The country should know that we are the most enthusiastic collaborators with this new era of moral regeneration and material progress, maintaining ourselves, as always, separate from all political chicanery. . . .”
Thus came the January 23 uprising that overthrew the first Governing Junta and, the Manifesto sent to the country by its authors said: “We have just recaptured the initial sentiment of the act undertaken by those responsible for the movement of September 5. The malicious deviation from our program exhibited in the manifesto of September 11 required the overthrow of leaders who betrayed the confidence deposited in them.” And it added: “We find ourselves once again at the beginning of a patriotic duty. This time we do not want to dictate standards ourselves, but we want to call for the country’s free majority, protected by our swords and led by its Constitutional President, to reorganize Chile, achieving the promises of our September 1th manifesto.” Therefore, the movement of January 23 aimed to recapture the original objectives of the September 5, that is, to give the country a constitution that corresponds to national aspirations.
“Once the new Constitution is created,” the September 11 manifesto says, “the election of public authorities should proceed on the basis of voter registrations undertaken through a free and broad enrollment. Once these authorities have been constituted, our mission will be completed.
The January 23 movement called the Constitutional President of Chile precisely for this purpose, “to give the country a Constitution that corresponds to national aspirations” and, once the Constitution was established, to proceed according to its provisions to elect public officials on the basis of voter registrations undertaken through a free and open enrollment. Military leaders declare that their mission will be complete once such objectives have been reached.
As a result of the September 5 revolution, the resignation of the Constitutional President of Chile was accepted and the Congress was dissolved.
The revolution of January 23 reconsidered the first act [i.e., the President’s resignation] and sustained the second in its entirety. It called upon the Constitutional President to complete his term of office and trusted him to achieve the revolutionary goal that, I repeat, is the establishment of a new Constitution, which corresponds to national aspirations, and proceeds immediately to the election of public officials on the basis of voter registrations that reflect a free and open enrollment. http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925
Therefore, the Costitutional President of Chile is called upon to return the country to institutional normalcy, indicating to him precisely the only path to achieve this objective. The revolution of January 23 did not intend to restore constitutional normalcy by opening the dissolved Congress, but called upon the President to achieve this goal through the route earlier outlined and no other.
On January 24, I received in Venice a telegram from the new provisionally constituted Governing Junta, which called me to the country for the objectives and purposes earlier described.
My first impulse, reflecting my firm personal resolve, was to decline their offer to return to assume the Government’s leadership, from which I considered myself definitely separated. A series of considerations of national interest, which they posed via cable, including a telegram signed by the presidents of all parties in the Liberal Alliance, caused me to change my mind in the sense of demanding the greatest sacrifice that can be required of a man, which was to reassume command in order to achieve the goals of the same revolution that had placed him in the position of abandoning power and the country. The telegram from the presidents of the parties that constitute the Liberal Alliance, received on January 26, was conceived in the following terms:
“New military movement organized on basis of your return to complete your constitutional term and implement September 11 manifesto, whose conditions are accepted by military institutions, political parties, and popular opinion. In name of parties that supported your Government, we beseech you to declare your acceptance and announce your immediate return. Situation entirely favorable. (Signed) ELIODORO YAÑEZ. Liberal President.-ENRIQUE OYARZUN, Radical President.- CLAUDIO VICUÑA, President of the Balmacedista Party.- NOLASCO CARDENAS, President of the Democratic Party.”
On the same day of January 26, I also received the following telegram from trade union organizations:
“National Workers’ Committee, formed by the Chilean Workers’ Federation, Railway Federation, Chilean Employees Federation, Communist Party, Metalurgical Union, and fourteen autonomous organizations have openly endorsed new Government and request esteemed President Alessandri to return immediately to resume office, only means to maintain public peace and save the country. This is a uniquely transcendental moment in Chile’s history. You cannot abandon us. VICUÑA FUENTES.- HIDALGO.- CARLOS ALBERTO MARTINEZ.- MOYANO.- LOYOLA.”
With these and other antecedents, I dispatched from Rome the January 27 telegram in which I accepted the request to return to the country to complete my constitutional term and obtain the passage of the new Constitution demanded by the triumphant revolution on the condition that the armed forces should return thereafter to their ordinary exercise of their professional responsibilities.
My acceptance was favorably received and from the foregoing expressions, it seems that this was country’s unanimous opinion. The armed forces also accepted my suggestion and, with http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925 patriotism that honors them greatly, they definitely have returned to their professional labors and they do not meddle or intervene in the Government’s acts in any way. The revolutionaries therefore have carried out their promises; it remains for the President of the Republic faithfully to carry out the promises that he accepted in the telegram from Rome.
Consequently, the mission that concerns me, determined by the events and the honorable promise contracted before the nation, is to secure the new Constitution that satisfies national aspirations and, in conformity with it, proceed to hold elections for public officials on the basis of voter registrations accomplished by open and free enrollment. This is my promise and I will carry it out with an unbreakable loyalty because this was the outcome pursued by he revolution and accepted unanimously by the country. To deviate from this road outlined by events and occurrances would betray the sworn trust and expose the country to a new disturbance of the public order.
Others may recall that, from the very first days of my Government, I preached constantly in presidential messages, in speeches and reports tha our political and administrative form of government was becomint impossible, that it was carrying the nation towards disaster and chaos.
I requested the reforms with all the energy of which I was capable: I affirmed constantly that a historical law, as ancient as humanity, teaches us that reforms delayes and resisted always result in revolution and disaster. Unfortunately, I was not heard.
When the September 5 movement arose, I understood that, whatever its immediate causes, at bottom it was the realization of my statements reiterated over the course of four years and thus I resigned in the face of these events. At the root of these events, I expressed myself in numerous private letters in the same way that I do now and I judged then, as now, that revolution was an evil necessity.
Notwithstanding this conviction, I did not want to take responsibility for disturbing and breaking the constitutional order because when this road is taken, the principle may be known, but the depth of the consequences in the future may be ignored, until it brings a country to its knees. I therefore preferred to resign rather than assume such reponsibility and left the country.
But with public opinion resigned to these facts and unanimous agreement produced to realize the purpose of the revolutionary movement, as it appears from the preceding events to which I have been referring and which I accepted in the telegram from Rome, the temperament imposed by these facts and events, forced me to carry out these objectives and return to the country to reassume command and exercise it until the end of the term for which I was elected.
I will not deviate from that line of conduct required, by the exercise of my duty, as a supreme necessity to avoid whatever disturbance of public order that would be understandable and justified if the President of the Republic, called to the country with a specific goal, were to deviate from it and betray the objectives for which he was called to achieve. For these reasons, the President of the Republic cannot and will not permit the reconvening and functioning of the Congress dissolved by decree of the Governing Junta on September 11, 1924. http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925
Given the existing situation and the precedents already cited, such a meeting would constitute a revolutionary act and the invitation to exercise it at this time implies a threat to the disturbance of public order. Since the first and foremost obligation of Government is to sustain this principle, the strict need to prevent such acts can be seen. The country will understand that, in preventing the functioning of the dissolved Congress, we proceed neither capriciously nor with hostility against anybody, but it is a question of a measure imposed by the events, by the circumstances and by the facts and that it reflects the unanimous feeling of public opinion. I want to add some words to better inform my fellow-citizens about the route that the President of the Republic is following amd will follow to achieve the task for which he now bears immense responsibility and which has been imposed by a double duty of patriotism and honor.
In the desire to know all opinions and to search for cooperation from all Chileans to execute the work of national salvation that we have undertaken in the best possible manner and to cement the country on immovable institutional foundations, a supreme decree of April 7 named a Commission of Consultation composed of 56 members, in which all political parties and national interests are represented. This Commission, elected at a meeting at which 139 people from all the country’s political parties and social forces, celebrated a session, over which the President of the Republic presided, on April 16.
At this meeting, two subcommittees were designated, one to study the proposal for a Constitution that the Government should sponsor and the other to study the form and process through which the national will, in the exercise of its sovereignty, will be manifested to approve the new Constitution.
The two subcommittees have worked patriotically, energetically, and persistently. In the subcommittee studying the Constitutional project that the Government will sponsor and defend, agreements of great transcendence have been reached on the most difficult and important topics in an atmosphere of frank cooperation and within a spirit of harmony and concord.
The President of the Republic observes, with patriotic satisfaction, that the work of that Subcommittee will produce a project that, if it should merit the honor of being ratified by the nation, will constitute a stamp of pride and it will assure the stability of the public order and the progress of the nation.
In the Subcommittee studying the form in which the national will, in the exercise of its sovereignty, should be expressed, there have been disagreements about methods: some of its members advocate that the Constitution should be written by a popularly elected Constituent Assembly; others, representing the most powerful currents of public opinion, argue that the Constituent Assembly should be organized on the basis of trade associations; and finally there are those who advocate that the Constitution should be approved by a plebiscite in which each man, exercising his sovereign rights, directly manifests his will without resort to the delegation of his right to popularly elected representatives in an Assembly.
Supporters of the last idea insist that the direct manifestation of opinion, without having the people delegate their authority to others who represent them in an Assembly or Corporation, is the supreme and ultimate expression of democracy whereas the representative system is guided http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925 by the impossibility that the people can manifest their way of thinking on all problems of collective interest in every moment and circumstance, as occurred in ancient Rome and Greece, and they believe that, in an act as transcendentally important as the ratification of the Supreme Law of the Republic, it makes sense that popular sovereignty does not delegate its authority, but exercises it directly, by means of a direct vote.
In the face of this divergence of opinions produced in the second Subcommittee, the President of the Republic has thought it suitable to consult the Subcommittee that studies the project of Constitution that the Government will support. If in that Cubcommittee, there is agreement on the issue, it will be easy to find the formula by which the national will, in the exercise of its sovereignty, should determine the Constitution that it has the right to be given.
There should be no fear that the President of the Republic, by himself, should try to enact the new Political Constitution of the State. No; the President of the Republic knows that the highest and most sovereign right exclusively reserved to the national will is to approve the Constitution that will govern the Republic’s destiny.
There might be a difference of opinions about the form and method by which the people exercise their sovereignty, but the manifestation of their sovereignty is necessary and indispensable. However, whether the new Constitution is approved by a popularly elected Constitutent Assembly or one elected by trade associations; whether it is approved by a plebiscite in which each citizen directly expresses his opinion and will, avoiding the danger, of which there are many examples in our history, that the representatives should betray their trust and fail to obey their mandate, abandoning the will of the voters, the fact is that it requires a previous step and that step is the generation of electoral power, pure and unstained. That is precisely the task that has preoccupied the Government to this moment.
I repeat that one of the objectives of the revolution was that, in accordance with the new Constitution, the election of public officials should occur on the basis of registered voters formed by a free and open enrollment process.
The Government already has achieved this first objective of the revolution. It has enacted an Electoral Law that consequently has produced the most open and free voter registration that has ever occurred in the Republic. All of the citizens that have a right to vote have registered and continue to register. Electoral fraude has become absolutely impracticable. Those who have tried to commit it have been discovered, as a result of the procedures established in the law and they will receive a sanction that conforms with justice, leaving the voter rolls totally clean and verified. Voter registrations still have not ended and the period fixed by law concludes at the beginning of the upcoming month. Judicial proceedings will end in the first two weeks of July, at which time the country will have a pure, clean, and free Electoral Authority, demanded by the revolution, which echoed the national sentiment in this respect.
When the Electoral Authority is definitively constituted, we will have the necessary instruments to elect a Constitutent Assembly either by popular election, on the basis of trade association representation, or through direct plebiscite on the Constitution that addresses the national aspirations of our historic moment. http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/Discurso_en_que_Arturo_Alessandri_explica_por_qu%C3%A9_no _convocar%C3%A1_a_sesiones_del_congreso_nacional_en_1925
The Government would have preferred to proceed more energetically in the achievement of a national consensus in order to have a Constitution that organizes the new public authorities and then proceed as soon as possible to their election in accordance with the nation’s new regulations; but events overwhelm the will of men. The organization of the Electoral Authority, the foundation of everything, is indispensable and as soon as this question is resolved, listening to the two subcommittees and the Consultative Commission named by the supreme decree of April 7, the Government will take the measures necessary to enact the Constitution, consulting the national will in the exercise of its sovereignty.
I flatter myself with the hope that September’s sun will shine on us with a new Political Constitution and it will present us with an expeditious route to elect the public officials that the Constitution determines.
It is fitting for me to request public opinion to remain calm. It is necessary that we not forget that the revolution has not yet ended. Order is restored and it will remain undisturbed; but the historical cycle of the revolutionary period will have ended only after the new Constitution has been enacted and the new public officials have been elected, following in the process the only path, the only means laid out by events and occurrences to definitively return this country to constitutional normality.
The preceding events authorize me to request patriotism from my fellow citizens, to ask them not to worry, to remain calm, because the Government will faithfully carry out the expressed propositions. It also is necessary that public opinion should not be surprised because naturally there are established interests that defend themselves, that raise flags and doctrines apparently symbolizing public interest, but which fundamentally have the sole purpose of defending privileges and situations that the country does not accept, that it rejects, and that were the cause of the movements of September and January 23.
The Government pursues only the public interest, the salvation of the nation and, stripped of all consideration, of all despicable sentiment, tries only to secure for the country a Constitution that meets the needs of the present hour and makes impossible the evils of the regime that has tried to extinguish the revolution, of that regime that has produced so many evils and which could have taken the country to a final disaster, if it had not been thrashed unceremoniously with an iron fist.
As soon as the Constitutional project, sponsored by the Government, is complete, it will be published widely and it will be submitted to the judicious and impartial wisdom of public opinion, which more than anyone looks out for the national interest.
I will entrust myself to explain personally to the country its fundamental bases, its purposes, and its intentions. The country will judge for itself what is agreeable, what its interests are in the present hour, and what its opinion will be, and what opinion in any case will prevail, whatever may be the particular interests of this group or party that may feel injured by the supreme manifestation of national will, in the exercise of its sovereignty.
Arturo Alessandri.