Chile has recently entered a common socio-political dynamic in Latin America: Shuttle policy, moving from one extreme to another by voting. Two years ago a momentous era was prophesied for the Chilean left, but such a thing appears to have been in the past overwhelming majority of Conservatives to establish the Constituent Assembly this Sunday.
18 months ago When Gabriel Boric was elected president, he symbolized the rise of a new left which seemed destined to set a long-term pattern with a new constitution drafted by progressive leftists, social activists and independents. In retrospect, the vociferous rejection of the Magna Carta proposal in last September’s elections should be seen as the first wake-up call.
A year and a half after José Antonio Kast lost the presidency to Boric by a significant margin of 11% of the vote, This conservative reference is considered the big winner of May 7th. His Republican Party, which unlike other political organizations did not enter into a coalition, had 35% of the vote and 22 seats in the Constituent Assembly, in a process that was due to end next December with a new constitution that would put the charter behind it leaves 1980, heir to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
As DIARIO DE CUBA claimed in the analyzes prior to this vote, What was at stake was not just an election by 50 voters who would approve or correct the draft work that a commission of experts has already been set up, set up by political agreement in the Chilean Congress on Boric’s initiative. It was at stake and the vote ended it to confirm a new political composition. Chile is caught in the left-right pendulum dynamic in which the political center, which carried crucial weight in the post-dictatorship transition, seems to have disappeared.
Kast hails from the traditionally conservative sectors of Chile, but in 2017 he founded the Republican Party with liberal economic positions and a tacit endorsement of the economic model instituted by the Pinochet dictatorship. In fact, this 57-year-old political leader, who is now the key political figure in Chile, opposed the repeal of the 1980 constitution.
The conservative coalition, with which Kast is to forge alliances in the debates of the constituent process, received 21% of the vote and 11 advisers in the convention.
Various analysts have described “political earthquake” the result of the polls, which represents a second political jolt for Boric, who has two and a half years left in his leadership. The first was the rejection of his Magna Carta proposal, to which he quickly responded by forging agreements. Now, with this result, a weak phase is predicted for the government of the young president.
“The illusion of a re-establishment of the country has vanished for the time being. In two years, the country has gone from a founding craze (of the left) to an overwhelming victory of the right – led by the Republican Party – to draft a new constitution,” summarizes Patricio Navia, political scientist and professor at the Universities of New York and Diego Portales.
“We cannot forget that a large part of the political elite has accepted the thesis preached by the most radical left that the country needs to be refounded,” Navia said when asked by DIARIO DE CUBA.
The analyst recalls that many conservative leaders, including two-time President Sebastián Piñera, “and almost everyone who had previously behaved as sensible left-wing leaders ended up buying themselves out and defending the thesis that Chile needed to write a new constitution instead to improve what I already had.
Months of tension and uncertainty are forecast, one could say on three pagesOn the one hand, Boric’s government, which is trying to implement a left-wing government, the Constitutional Convention, where the conservative sector predominates, and the Congress, which is more diverse.
According to former voter Felipe Harboe, one of the political implications of this election with future implications is that the traditional centre-left party “disappears from the constitutional discussion scenario”.
Referees of the agreement that implemented the post-dictatorship transition were simply erased from the political map. The Party for Democracy, led by former Socialist President Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), or the Christian Democrats, who had heads of state like Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), will have no representation have in the constitutional convention.
After the results, on Sunday night itself, the main antagonists reacted to the results. Kast said: “Chile defeated a failed government”. While Boric relies on self-criticism, but without responding: “I would like to invite the Republican Party not to make the mistake we made.”
Finally, despite forecasts of high abstentions, given the climate of apparent apathy that had prevailed in the previous few days, a total of 82% of Chile’s 15 million voting-age population turned out to vote.