The President of Chile, José Antonio Kast, this Thursday urged the country’s transport workers to put an end to the three-day strike they are maintaining due to the increase in fuel prices, and he appealed to national unity in order to deal with the economic crisis that the country is currently going through, in a situation of “technical recession,” as the Minister of Finance, Jorge Quiroz, acknowledged on Wednesday.
The mobilizations began on the 9th and have lasted for the past 72 hours, after the Federation of Truck Owners of the Fifth Region (Fedequinta) announced its indefinite support for the protests. However, the main truckers’ confederations have still not backed the strikes and, for the moment, have chosen to continue the dialogue with the Government, which has committed to freezing the price of fuel until next February 3, a proposal that the demonstrators consider insufficient.
In this context, Kast has appeared publicly to call for the end of a set of mobilizations that, in his view, does not help to resolve the crisis. “Let’s not go back to where someone had to get off a vehicle and dance to get through,” the Chilean president has requested, defending “the right to protest but not the right to cut off roads.”
Kast emphasized that the latest contacts with the sector have produced “progress,” but he stressed that, above all, unity is essential. “That is the most urgent call,” he said, insisting that “difficulties only deepen if roads are cut.”