The announcements and statements made  by president Piñera show, clearly and eloquently, that the president and his government have no intention of seeking to address the demands and complaints of the Chilean population that have been expressed in the streets since 18 October.

Not only does he fail to offer solutions; his only response has been to let the repressive forces of the state do their worst, adorned with the insulting 'reform package' with which he tried to fool the country fifteen days ago. Today, he proposes to increase the repression, put it on a firmer legal footing, and provide more technical resources to the institutions carrying it out. The measures Piñera is threatening to take constitute a return to the days of the dictatorship, albeit without soldiers on the streets or the presidential palace of La Moneda for now. That, however, is the implied threat underlying his words.

Strictly speaking, these threats are not new today. President Piñera's most recent public appearances and statements show that he is the president of the powerful and not of Chile, that he represents the interests of the 1 % in whose hands the wealth is concentrated, and that he lives within the same bubble as they do. For the rest of the country, the only thing the government has to offer is brutal, disproportionate, uninhibited repression from the 'forces of order'.

Under the orders and decisions of this government, during this social mobilisation alone, the institutions that are meant to Project all Chileans have caused more than 25 deaths amongst the population, hundreds of injuries due to the direct action of the repressive forces and their less-lethal weapons ('low intensity weapons', as they are euphemistically known) including loss of sight, as well as wounds from pellets and various types of shotgun projectiles. Thousands of people have been arrested by the police.

To be sure, under pressure from the social mobilisations, the government did withdraw the troops from the street on 28 October, but that does not mean that Piñera has abandoned his militaristic approach to handling the crisis. Although he carried out a cabinet reshuffle on that same day, resulting in the departure of some of the most recalcitrant figures of that segment of the right wing that openly yearns for the return of the dictatorship, that has not changed Piñera's own repressive and dictatorial approach to governing. He has not backed down from his desire to criminalise the social movements. Although the mobilisations are peaceful and enormous, they are always attacked by state forces without the slightest provocation, perhaps in order to provoke a response to provide images of violence in the street can be shown in the media.

The proof of this is that both Piñera and the rest of his ministers who have made public statements continue to cling to their dishonest initial offer, asserting that there are no resources and no possibility to offer any other solutions, that there is no way to change the constitution, that a constitutional assembly is unnecessary, that what is needed is to restore public order, social peace, normality, and all of the chains needed to keep the country bound to the whims of the powerful. The government's response has been nothing but repression. Because even that is not enough for them, they want to turn everything into a crime. Is this what the government, the Pinochetista right, and most of the political class call 'democracy'?

On the other hand, there is plenty of money and resources available to repress the very population they claim to be protecting. There is no shortage of resources to fund a law against looting, to fund a law against Black Blocs, a law against barricades. There's plenty of funding available to finance a special team of prosecutors to lay charges against protesters. There's money available to create a special task force of prosecutors, military police, and agents of the PDI [Criminal Investigation Department] to gather intelligence work (on the Chilean population, not the extraterrestrials Piñera's wife Cecilia Morel claims are behind the mobilisations); there are resources to fund increased aerial surveillance by the military police and the PDI (to match their own people, whom they appear to fear). There's certainly funding available to create a website intended encourage people to inform on each other and restore the distrust amongst Chileans that was so effective during the dictatorship of the military and the bosses. There's funding to give legally protective status to the military police, PDI, and the prison guards, when the only people they need protection from are in the presidential palace. There's funding available to modify the National Intelligence System in order to match and control the Chilean population. There is certainly no shortage of Money and resources to finance the modernisation of the military police and the PDI, supposedly in order to protect the ‘human rights’ of the members of these institutions.

Piñera's statements - as always - are intended to deceive. By the very definition of the concept of human rights as established by the United Nations, it is the state, the institutions of the state, and the agents of the state who violate or ignore people's human rights. Always. The agents of repressive institutions and the armed forces are the ones violating human rights in Chile. They may be acting on instructions or orders from the government, but they are the ones who violate these fundamental rights. Thus, if Mr Piñera and his government are interested in protecting the human rights of the agents of the repressive institutions, he need only stop ordering them to engage in repression, desist from using them to control the population and continue protecting their own petty interests and those of the powerful business interests that own this country.

The final touch on the threats President Piñera made today was his announcement that he was calling a meeting of the National Security Council (Cosena). This body is one of the retaining walls established by the illegitimate dictatorial constitution by which we are governed. This wall and the 'Constitutional Court' are just two examples of the shackles that subject the country and its citizens to a constitutional order imposes on the basis of the systematic violation of human rights by the Pinochet dictatorship. The composition of the Cosena is based entirely on the criteria of internal warfare and repression. The fact that this body has been summoned means that Piñera - in his febrile war logic – wants to impose another state of emergency or move directly to a state of siege. In other words, it is a serious threat to impose a more open dictatorship.

In these key moments in the social and political crisis, the organised participation of the population in all regions is necessary in order to impose limits on the repressive and dictatorial intentions of the president and the powerful. However, the members of the political class who do not want to be complicit in such dictatorial acts must also intervene decisively to put a stop to these plans with all necessary force in their respective areas of authority. They must act immediately to ensure that these plans to impose a siege on the country and shackle its inhabitants do not become law. They have already been complicit in this social, economic, and political regime for thirty years. It is time they woke up and acted responsibly to defend the common good. However, the same demand must be directed at the courts, particularly the Supreme Court and its presiding judge. They must not hide behind false neutrality in these circumstances. They must also acknowledge that they are institutions that belong to the entire country, not a small segment of the society.

The repressive state installed by Piñera continues to grow, but so does the level of social and territorial mobilisation and organisation of a people who have initiated a constitutional process that appears to have passed the point of no return, and who refuse to leave the most political space of all, the street, until their demands have been satisfied by a political class who appear to have plugged their ears with banknotes.

Translated by Élise Hendrick