Former Justice Minister Jaime Gajardo (PC) described support from Republican sectors for Juan Aliste Vega's request for a humanitarian pardon as an "immoral bargaining chip", according to BioBioChile. In an interview with the outlet, the former minister directly accused President José Antonio Kast: "The president's commitment is to the perpetrators and not to the victims".
Gajardo served as justice minister during Gabriel Boric's government. He is now an academic at Diego Portales University (UDP) and closely follows the decisions of his successor in the ministry, Fernando Rabat.
The published interview does not detail the status of the pardon request or which Republican leaders have supported it. It also includes no response from the government or the Republican Party to the accusations. Gajardo also warned of a weakening of the National Search Plan, the state policy to find victims of enforced disappearance during the dictatorship.
The other line of criticism concerns prison policy. During the campaign, Kast promised 100 thousand new prison spaces. According to Gajardo, that figure was "absolutely unachievable", and the now-president later reduced it to 40 thousand and then to 20 thousand.
The former minister maintained that the budget for 2027 only allows an increase of around 2,700 spaces. In his view, those spaces come from projects carried over from Boric's government. "It's quite incredible how reality is so different from the promises made during the campaign", he said.
Gajardo defended the prison infrastructure master plan promoted under the previous administration. According to his account, prison capacity had not increased since 2012, and there had been no plan of that kind since Ricardo Lagos's government. He said Boric's administration created more than 5,000 spaces, planned another 15,000 and left an additional 15,000 under study.
As an example of continuity, he cited La Laguna prison in Talca, which his government inaugurated. As he explained, that project began under Michelle Bachelet and continued under Sebastián Piñera. The former minister criticized the current administration for failing to acknowledge that what it is completing today comes from previous governments.
Gajardo also accused the executive branch of turning transfers of dangerous prisoners into a media spectacle that, in his view, puts national security at risk. So far, the Ministry of Justice has not publicly responded to these criticisms, according to the available information.
