By Nono Barahona. March 20, 2017
SANTIAGO, Chile. "Leave my daughter alone" the Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, 65, said today to Chilean reporters. She was referring to accusations leveled against her youngest daughter, Sofía Henríquez, 24, for buying a plot of land in the vicinity of "Dominga", a proposed huge mining project.
The President said today that she was the one who decided to buy the land but had her youngest daughter register it in her own name. And she added that the purpose behind the purchase was "recreational", not turning a profit as some critics have suggested.
She explained that she first caught wind of the place in 2013 through a nurse who runs a meditation center there. The President said that she was told that the place had "good vibrations" and was "mystical" and for that reason she had decided to buy it to leave it to her daughters in the future. And she denied that the purchase was linked to the proximity of the Dominga mining project, adding that at that point she ignored the existence of such project.
The news disclosed yesterday by a Santiago newspaper that the President's youngest daughter was the owner of land only 12 kilometers away from the proposed mining project caused a political storm.
Critics claimed that the Dominga mining project located in the vicinity was initially turned down last March 9, 2017 due to pressure from the Bachelet administration, who didn't want the public opinion to know that members of the Bachelet family (her youngest daughter and her daughter-in-law) own land in the vicinity.
Critics pointed out that the project's initial shutdown denied the region in which it is located of a critical source of income and employment.
The newspaper story referred to by President Bachelet indicated that the Dominga project would have brought 1,450 permanent jobs to the region, plus 9,800 jobs involved in building a port.
The project was rejected on environmental grounds.
Critics have claimed that the Bachelet administration put pressure on the commission assessing the project to shut it down, because the Bachelet administration anticipated that, if the project was approved, the public would know that the daughter owned land that would increase its value as a result of the project's approval, causing a public backlash against the President, because of the conflict of interest involved.
President Bachelet's reaction to the newspaper story comes in stark contrast to her reaction in 2015 to the so called "Caval" scandal involving her son. On that occasion she waited months before discussing in public the issue. By then, the scandal had taken a huge toll on her credibility, according to polls and the President's own acknowledgement.
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