2023-05-08 10:15:30
Not even the best forecasts predicted such comfortable results for the extreme right Chile in the councilor elections
constitutional held this Sunday: the Republican Party, in favor of maintaining the current Constitution, obtained 22 seats out of the 50 at stake (99% counted), becoming the party with the most votes at the national level and doubling the traditional right in seats.
“Today we can breathe a little easier,” said its leader, José Antonio Kast, who lost to President Gabriel Boric in the presidential elections 2021 and is a staunch defender of the neoliberal model established by the military dictatorship (1973-1990).
With 35.4% of votes, it swept most of Chile’s 16 regions, in its traditional strongholds in the south, in the north and even became with fiefdoms governed by the left such as the Valparaíso Region.
These 22 seats will allow you to exercise the power of veto in the constitutional body: “In this scenario, it is most probable that the Constitution that emerges from this process will not be a Constitution
enabling. It is a guarantee of the status quo and the strengthening of the presidential options of the Republicans”said the director of the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile, Claudia Heiss.
“A DISTRIBUTION THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING”
The Republicans repeated the surprise that they already gave in the 2021 elections, when they won the first presidential round and they obtained 16 parliamentarians in the legislatures (15 deputies and one senator, although three of them left the party). However, now for the first time, they will lead the body in charge of discussing and approving a new Constitution.
“There is a distribution of power that is different from what we thought and that changes everything: the constitutional debate is going to change because the issues that are included in the Constitution and that will be important to the Government will depend on the Republican Party,” said analyst Kenneth Bunker, from the Tech Global think tank.
Kast’s overwhelming victory completely changes the balance of forces of the new Constitutional Council once morest the previous Convention, dominated by progressivism and a majority of candidates independents who, unlike today’s elections, were able to run on their own lists.
For the deputy director of the Institute for Society Studies, Rodrigo Pérez, one of the keys will be whether the ultra-rightists “choose to accentuate their most vociferous side or if they establish a policy to seek allies.”
During the campaign, the Republicans lashed out hard once morest the rest of the opposition, although in recent days, Kast – who left the traditional right-wing coalition where he was a member for more than 20 years because he considered it too moderate- gave signs of wanting to bet on a more dialogue style.
“A COMPLICATED MIX” FOR THE RIGHT
After the rejection of the first constitutional proposal in September already Unlike the extreme right, the traditional right opted from the beginning to resume the constituent itinerary.
Now, according to analysts, the conservative Chile Seguro coalition is weakened and at the crossroads of taking extreme positions of the Republicans or adopt a more moderate profile of their own.
The deputy of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Juan Antonio Coloma, the main formation of the bloc, admitted that it was a “victory of the opposition” led by the Republicans: “We are not going to make the mistakes of the left in the previous process,” he claimed.
For Rodrigo Perez, “the leaders of the traditional right are not achieving a project that appeals to large majorities and they face a complicated mix: building an identity with which they connect with voters and understand that moderation by itself is not enough to be a political project,”
The political scientist from the Alberto Hurtado University, Federica Sánchez, for her part, qualified the Republican victory and maintained that, although the extreme right has gained veto power in the constitutional council, the leader of the opposition in Congress continues to be the right traditional.
A GLOBAL PHENOMENON?
The phenomenon of the Republican Party in Chile is not equivalent to other far-right phenomena in the world, according to Bunker, and –According to him, it corresponds more to a “dispute of factions” of the Chilean right that compete for the hegemony of space.
However, for University of Chile political scientist Octavio Avendaño, there are similarities between the Chilean extreme right and their counterparts in other countries, especially in relation to issues related to insecurity and the migratory crisis, although with elements from the country itself.
“The Republican Party also drinks from the consequences of the social outbreak and the prolonged economic crisis that generates uncertainty and a feeling of discomfort in a citizenry that is increasingly appealing for order and stability,” Avedano concluded.
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