An impeccable procedure

Since the government has tried by every means to obscure the facts, let's start there: by clarifying the facts. And these are the facts. Prisoners have the right to request sentence reductions for good conduct, through a process that involves a report from the Gendarmerie, the evaluation of a commission, and the signature of the Minister of Justice. The Piñera government refused to grant them to those convicted of sexual offenses against minors. In 2022, a law institutionalized that exception, and the previous government denied them every time they were requested. Some of the convicted went to court, arguing that the law could not apply to sentences handed down before 2022. In most cases, though not all, the courts agreed with them and ordered that the benefit be granted. But in May 2026, the new Minister of Justice, Fernando Rabat, changed the criterion and decided to grant, without a court order, 56 sentence reductions to sex offenders. Some of their stories have come to light in recent days: among those benefited by the "Rabat doctrine" are a doctor who abused at least four patients; a man who attacked a 16-year-old girl with an intellectual disability; and another who raped a 10-year-old boy. As the minister admitted, "the vast majority" of them are already out on the streets. There end the facts. The stubborn, indisputable facts. Next, the cover-up. On Tuesday, the outlet Interferencia broke the story. The new spokesman, Gonzalo Arenas, burned his ships in his very first appearance as spokesman, asserting that "the procedure was impeccable" and that any criticism is "ill-intentioned." The government distributed briefing notes falsely equating Rabat's 56 decrees with the Supreme Court rulings issued during the previous government. Deceived by their own government, members of parliament, party leaders, commentators, and sympathetic media outlets counterattacked: the whole uproar was "hypocrisy" and "fake news." On Wednesday, Minister Rabat argued that he had merely complied with a doctrine of the Supreme Court, and that his signature merely "carries out its rulings." Speaking as if he were the convicts' defense attorney, the Minister of Justice asserted that "there is a constitutional principle, namely that a law cannot be applied retroactively to the detriment of the convicted person." That doctrine, he claimed, "was established by the Supreme Court." That was not true either: in at least ten cases, several of them from 2026, the court had denied the sentence reductions. On Thursday, after a full-court session attended by the minister, the president of the Supreme Court denied the existence of any such doctrine and clarified that "each case is analyzed individually." "It was the Minister of Justice who issued the decrees," she emphasized. One meter behind her — close enough to appear in the same frame for the television cameras — stood Rabat. By that point, the official version was already untenable. But La Moneda insisted. The spokesman completed his hara-kiri by asserting that "the government can do nothing but apply the law" and that "this is a right" that "cannot be denied" to criminals. In a histrionic gesture, Arenas displayed decrees signed by former minister Gajardo and current minister Rabat, holding one in each hand in the air, and claiming they were identical. That was not true: in the first, a court ruling was being complied with; in the second, freedom was being granted without a court order. That night, the Minister of Justice went to Mega and claimed he was obligated to sign the decrees, because he had sworn to uphold the Constitution and "that is the way the Constitution and the law regulate this matter." Early the next morning, he called a press conference to announce that he was suspending the signing of new sentence reductions. Literally overnight, Rabat went from asserting that the Constitution obligated him to sign the decrees to announcing that he would no longer sign them. Indignation spread through the ruling coalition. Realizing they had been deceived by their own government, members of parliament and former authorities distanced themselves from the official version. When Piñera's former Minister of Justice, Hernán Larraín, clarified that the benefit should not apply to those convicted of abuse, the president of the Republican Party publicly confronted him over his support for Colonia Dignidad, and the president of the UDI accused his colleague of making "injurious and unacceptable" statements. "It's not the crime, it's the cover-up." The famous maxim from the Watergate case applies here perfectly. La Moneda's clumsy cover-up turned the "Rabat doctrine" into a boundless scandal. When the bomb went off, this was a serious but contained crisis. The government could have acknowledged the mistake, apologized to the public, empathized with the victims' outrage, and collected the political accountability with the minister's departure. Instead, it embarked on a spiral of lies and justifications that turned a contained crisis into a political disaster engulfing the entire administration, just as its new spokesman was making his debut. It became clear that, with or without a spokesman, the modus operandi of the Second Floor gurus remains intact: deny the evidence to the very end; trust that blaming the previous government for anything is enough; hide information from one's own supporters; and drift aimlessly, without strategic direction, in a rarified sea. All of this, seasoned with an absent president, who seems stunned by the collapse of a dysfunctional model of governance. And by an abysmal lack of empathy for those affected by government decisions. A deficiency already seen in the fuel price hike, the social spending cuts, the elimination of Elijo mi PC, and the collapse of Fund E, but which now stings especially because these are victims of sexual crimes, who learn that the government — in decrees bearing the formula "by order of the President of the Republic" — set their abusers free. It is they who deserve public apologies, clear explanations, and the assignment of political responsibility. A responsibility that, until Tuesday, was confined to the Ministry of Justice. But in the days that followed, with this shoddy cover-up operation, it now extends to the new spokesman, to a cabinet in terminal condition, and to the center of power in La Moneda: a Second Floor that has made denial and duplicity its reflex when facing any crisis. So much so that it can assert, with the best poker face, that the abhorrent "Rabat doctrine" is, in truth, "an impeccable procedure."