Government and Politics
Pichilemu, along with the communes of Placilla, Nancagua, Chépica, Santa Cruz, Pumanque, Palmilla, Peralillo, Navidad, Lolol, Litueche, La Estrella, Marchihue, and Paredones, is part of Electoral District No. 35 and belongs to the 9th Senatorial Constituency (O'Higgins) of the electoral divisions of Chile.
Pichilemu is governed by the mayor (alcalde), who manages the executive function. The City Council (concejo municipal) manages the legislative function. The mayors and the councilors are elected popularly every four years, with possibility of re-election. Marcelo Cabrera Martínez was elected in 2008 as the new mayor with 42.08 percent of the vote; he served from May to August 2009, when he was permanently banned from holding public office after being convicted for adulterating tickets. Then, the municipal council elected Roberto Córdova as new mayor on September 9, 2009. Between 2007 and 2009, Pichilemu had seven mayors, after Jorge Vargas González was removed from the office for committing the crime of bribery; he was mayor for over 10 years, from 1996 to 2007. Vargas was succeeded by Victor Rojas, who was later accused of the same crime and eventually removed from the office too. Roberto Córdova was popularly elected mayor for the first time in 2012 with 47.9 percent. The current councilors of Pichilemu are Aldo Polanco Contreras, Andrea Aranda Escudero, Marta Urzúa Púa, Mario Morales Cárceles, Felipe Bustamante Olivares, and Hugo Toro Galaz. Both the mayor and the councilors took office on 6 December 2012, and their term will expire on 6 December 2016.
The Pichilemu Police, known in Spanish as Carabineros de Pichilemu, and officially Tercera Comisaría de Carabineros de Pichilemu, is the police force of Pichilemu. It is commanded by Tomás Molina Meza. The police station is located in front of the former Pichilemu post office building, in Daniel Ortúzar avenue.
Read more about this topic: Pichilemu
Famous quotes containing the words government and/or politics:
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)