Mayor cuts off electricity in town to avoid TV pillory

John

By John

The Los Andes Public Prosecutor’s Office in Chile has opened an investigation into the power outage that left the town of Rinconada, in the Valparaíso region, 77 km north of the capital Santiago, in darkness on Sunday night. The judges suspect that the mayor, Juan Galdames, plunged the town into darkness to prevent his residents from seeing an investigative program on Mega channel that talked about him. The report accused him of tax fraud, of pocketing the proceeds of the local casino and also of having his councilors attack Mega reporter Natasha Kennard, who had come to Rinconada to make her television report. The program aired regularly. However, no one in the town was able to watch it because, a few minutes before it was due to be broadcast, the town lost power. The cause of the outage was unknown individuals throwing objects at the high-voltage cables.