The accusation was rejected by at least 14 senators, out of a total of 43. There was one abstention and the opposition needed a demanding majority of 29 favorable votes to remove the president, who is due to finish his second term as president in March next year.
The Senate decision took place five days before the presidential elections in which the ultra-conservative candidate José Antonio Kast and the former left-wing student leader, Gabriel Boric, appear with the first options to go to the December ballot according to polls.
The accusation against Piñera had been approved last week in the Chamber of Deputies.
During the session, which started in the morning, the defense of the center-right president insisted that the accusation was due to electoral purposes and lacked legal support because it was a matter already reviewed and dismissed by justice.
“A constitutional accusation is improvised with the manifest and declared spirit, made transparent in speeches and statements in the press, to place their discussion prior to the electoral campaign”, said Piñera’s lawyer, Jorge Galvez.
The opposition, which was pushing for impeachment, only has 24 senators in the Upper House, insufficient to reach a two-thirds majority. If the prosecution had been successful, Piñera would have been dismissed and disqualified for five years from holding public office.
The accusation was originally presented in mid-October after the controversy unleashed by the disclosure of the Pandora Papers, which alludes to a clause in the 2010 sale of Minera Dominga – a project in which the president’s family participated – that conditioned a payment that there were no regulatory changes that could affect its development.
Piñera, who also insists that the case has already been studied and dismissed by the courts, was then in his first government. The president, who does not attend Sunday’s elections, said on several occasions that the accusation was due to electoral interests and he was confident that it would be rejected.
Source From: Ambito
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