Chilean parliament vows to eliminate corruption via congressional audit

In the presence of Chile's President Michelle Bachelet and the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, Chile announced Tuesday the first ever audit of Congress in its 204-year history.

The presidents of the two chambers, Marco Antonio Nunez (Party for Democracy) and Patricio Walker (Christian Democratic Party), ordered senators and representatives alike "to never again be involved in bad practices" that have been brought to the public in recent months.

The political leaders were referring to the illegal or irregular practices used in electoral campaigns in 2013 both by the center-left New Majority coalition, which currently makes up the government, and its right-wing opponent, the Alliance for Chile.

Both coalitions were put together by using money from large companies, which has caused a crisis of trust among the Chilean people in the political establishment.

Business group PENTA and chemical company Soquimich were involved in the scandal as they both used false documents to ensure that the Internal Revenue Service would return the payments to the companies.

The scandal was eventually discovered after a PENTA executive reported the crime.

Fishing company CorPesca is also being investigated for delivering money in an irregular way to senators and representatives.

Sources claimed that these funds were to sway Congress to vote in favor of the new Fisheries Law, which favors large companies over independent fishermen.

Due to these revelations, various executives and former members of parliament are under house arrest while the investigation continues.

During their speeches, Nunez and Walker asked President Bachelet to freeze parliamentary allowances, which are higher than those paid to members of many European parliaments.

They also focused on the need to promote transparency in the work of parliamentarians, while announcing the creation of a new code of ethics.

Stating that the government mulls to freeze the allowances from January 2016, the leaders also declared that being a member of parliament was a full-time job that leaves no room for other business activities.

An active democracy "requires honest institutions and representatives, subject to the highest possible standards of control," said Nunez.

"If we are part of the problem, we have to be part of the solution," added Walker. "This is an opportunity to show the people what we do and to mend what we need to fix."

"For many times, we have not been those that the citizens expected from us. There has been evidence of practices in the political and business arenas that we have decided to eradicate. What was tolerated yesterday is no longer acceptable today," he concluded. Endi