2023-05-11 16:41:42
The right stayed with the constituent in Chile
In an October 2020 plebiscite, 78 percent of Chileans voted to change the 1980 constitution, which the country inherited from Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Gabriel Boric came to power in March 2022 supported by the social movements that took to the streets to protest in 2019 and made the change of the constitution one of their banners.
But in November last year, Chileans rejected a proposed constitution that had been written by the Boric government-backed Constitutional Council. Composed of independent parties, leftist activists, 50 percent occupied by women and with seats reserved for indigenous people, they drafted the text that was rejected.
Sunday’s elections defined the new Council, which will be in session from June and will have to deliver a draft constitution for Chileans to accept it – or not – in the plebiscite on December 17 of this year. The Republican party – led by José Antonio Kast, who lost the second round against Boric and has claimed responsibility for the Pinochet dictatorship affirming that “he did not lock up opponents” – will be the majority in this new Council because he obtained 35.6 percent of the vote. It is followed by Unity for Chile – the government coalition – with 28% and Chile Seguro, the right-wing coalition, which was left with 21.6% of the vote.
“The constitutional process began with very strong support from the people,” says Lucía Dammert, an academic at the University of Santiago who was the head of second-tier advisers at La Moneda, a key position for Palacio in Chile. “But after the November rejection, it ends with a crisis,” she adds. She explains that the defeat of the left in Sunday’s elections can be attributed, in part, to the exhaustion of Chileans with a debate that is alien to their daily concerns. Among which it includes economic difficulties such as high inflation and unemployment; the increase in insecurity; the criminalization of migration and the militarization of southern Chile due to confrontations with the Mapuche indigenous people.
“The problem is that the political management of the Boric government has increased the feeling of uncertainty in the country,” says Marcelo Mella, from the University of Santiago. For Mella, the vote on Sunday is also part of a process of “emptying the vote of the left and the traditional center-left.” He explains that these sectors have been losing the electorate since before the Boric government, which, although it is from the left, came to power supported by a more activist left that took to the streets in 2019.
The Chilean right read Boric’s shortcomings
“There is a key difference between the constitutional process in Chile and the Petro government in Colombia,” says Angélica Rodríguez, a researcher at the department of international relations at the Universidad del Norte, “and that is that in Chile something is at stake that society in general agrees that it is necessary to change: the Constitution of Pinochet”.
Despite the differences between the constituent process in Chile and the government of Gustavo Petro in Colombia, there are similar elements in the strategy used by the Chilean right to obtain the result on Sunday and that of the Colombian right.
“The right knew how to understand the disengagement of the left with what the Chileans are asking for,” says Guerrero, from Fundación para el Progreso. He says that the leftist government “enclosed itself in a bubble of a maximalist constitutional proposal that filled the average Chilean with uncertainty.”
“Instead of focusing on the constitution, the right has focused on security, the criminalization of migration and the economy,” says Dammert of the University of Santiago, “those elements are their workhorse.”
For the journalist and editor of Tercera Dosis, Juan Andrés Guzmán, the left was offering Chileans a structural solution to the problems they face every day, “but the population does not look at politics as a structural explanation of reality, rather they look for daily solutions”, he says.
Another similar element is the support of the social mobilization that elected the government of Boric in Chile and that of Gustavo Petro in Colombia. The Chilean social outbreak is made up of changing majorities and not all of them are involved in politics. For example, regarding the compulsory nature of voting for more people to participate in politics, a “fantasy was built on the left that the population that did not vote was mainly center-left and that making them vote was an opportunity for those sectors,” says the journalist. Guzman. That was seen at the polls. Null and blank votes exceeded 20 percent of the count.
But the result on Sunday shows that for those majorities that are entering to participate “the cleavage between left and right is useless,” says Guzmán, “they have a much more down-to-earth vision of solutions, linked to their daily lives,” he concludes.
In the Colombian case, as explained by Yann Basset, a professor of political science at El Rosario, “the idea of political change that was given by a strong social outbreak is still a reference in Petro’s speech, which raised his government plan as a response to the mobilization, but the outbreak was a particular context and contexts change”. “That’s why you can’t assume that he always has his support,” he adds.
Lessons for Colombia
Symbols alone are not enough
“Governments need to have results as well as symbols,” says Dammert of the University of Santiago. “Human rights talks, a new development model, police reform are welcome, but when you are in power, citizens need results,” he concludes.
In Chile, the right was able to champion the Boric government’s lack of daily results and obtained a very important vote. With a left engrossed in structural arguments, the right can effectively adopt “simple discourses”, as the journalist Guzmán describes those who describe everyday situations of citizens.
The promise of change can lead to disconnection
For Rodríguez, from UniNorte, the defeat of the left in Chile invites Colombia to reflect on the importance of moderation. “When there are processes of deep change, listening to the voices we don’t like is difficult and many times we speak with the same ones”, he says.
For the Boric government, the difficulty in building bridges between dissident voices has been difficult. “It has always had a minority coalition,” explains Mella from the University of Santiago, “as it moves more towards the center, it loses legislative support within its own coalition, which is why it has pending reforms such as the tax, health and the pension”.
According to Rodríguez from UniNorte, Petro “the latest cabinet change could take its toll, because he came with a broad coalition that gave him room for action for the regional elections in October,” says the academic, “even within Congress, Since it broke the bench, it faces more fragmented voting, which can worsen in elections ”, he concludes.
“The constituent assembly dominated by the left in Chile failed because it did not know how to build bridges,” says Basset del Rosario, “we cannot demand that Petro find rules of the game for everyone, it is normal for him to want to apply his program, but he runs the risk of risk of locking itself into a dialogue with a single sector and isolating itself in its process. If that happens, the left will lose the next elections ”, he concludes.
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