It is a strange paradox that the Chilean broad front is the target of sharp criticism today at the moment of its greatest electoral success by winning the presidential elections in December 2021. This new left coalition, whose equivalent in Spain is Podemos and to a lesser extent La France insoumise in the country of Asterix, broke into the Chamber of Deputies in 2017 and multiplied its representation in that chamber in 2021, in alliance with the party communist (20.94%). She outvoted the centre-left coalition around the Socialists and the Party for Democracy (17.16%). Above all, her presidential candidate Gabriel Boric won the election with a comfortable victory in the second ballot against the right-wing candidate José Antonio Kast (55.87/44.13%). In other words: in December 2021, the success was resounding, since not only the parliamentary Sorpass took place in favor of this new left in alliance with the communists, but also the presidency was taken over.
From March 11, 2022, the date of taking over the leadership of the nation, the challenge was enormous, since with the brand new President Boric began a fascinating experiment, whose main feature was in the sorpass and at the same time in the inclusion of all leftists, new and traditional, in the new Government. The idea of an experiment must be taken very seriously given that it intervenes after the failure of Syriza in Greece, the difficult consolidation of untamed France after the second consecutive loss to its presidential candidate (Jean-Luc Mérlenchon) and the debacle of the British Labor Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.
As for Latin America, there isn’t much to see: only the Uruguayan Broad Front governments (whose coincidence by name doesn’t mean they’re the same, quite the contrary) and the recent triumphs of Lula in Brazil and Petro in Colombia can tell them from this new one Chilean left to be confirmed. The rest, to forget it: President Boric has not stopped denouncing the governments of Maduro in Venezuela and Ortega in Nicaragua as dictatorships. Do these criticisms and denunciations generate unanimity in the two coalitions that support them? The answer is no: from the communists’ frontal criticism of Boric’s harsh sentence against the Maduro and Ortega governments to the incomprehensible absence of communist MPs and the Broad Front (except for one MP, Gonzalo Winter: “It never hurts to listen”) the intervention of the Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy before the Chilean Congress a few days ago.
Incomprehensible.
That’s the problem. Which is incomprehensible on these and many other issues (such as the security of citizens and the complete absence of positive votes by Frente Amplista and communist MPs and Senators for legislation on the “privileged legitimate defense” of police officers and protocols related to the use of force by police officers) is that this new left is so distancing itself from the government of its president that, sublimely paradoxical, the socialists guarantee legal support for the executive’s proposals. It is a strange situation, dominated by guilt, trauma and fear, in which the Broad Front behaves deadly towards President Boric in much the same way as the Socialists towards Salvador Allende during popular unity (1970-1973). While in the former prevails a form of adherence to the purity of ideals (defending the rights to all events in the context of a public safety crisis) and an unworkable program given the lack of majorities in Congress, a guilty unconscious dominates among the socialists, leading them to become President Support Boric at all costs.
There is more to this paradox than the tension between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility verified by Max Weber: there are fears of loss and unresolved feelings of guilt that produce a cruel outcome, a president at times overwhelmed by loneliness and fractured by both fear and guilt. A president who embodies and synthesizes the tension between the old left and the new left.
Various reasons explain the possibility of failure of this experiment. The first, undoubtedly the most important, is the unconsciousness of governing and dealing with an experiment, understanding such a period in the history of the Chilean left that a new left reigns supreme with all legitimacy over socialists and communists. (in the latter case in a presidential primary between Boric and communist candidate Daniel Jadue), produces the Sorpasso, acknowledges his need for the Socialists, and corrects the government program (an unacceptable delivery to many).
Second, it ignores that left-wing politics consists in generating transformations while recognizing limits and restrictions (institutional, balance of power, etc.), which has led to a persistent state of limbo on various issues between loyalty to the original program and acceptance of the need to adhere to an increasingly hostile state of the world: The public security crisis was not there when he took command of the nation in March 2022, nor was the spiraling inflation, and a year later it is matters that are absorbing and redefining the situation by both wrested power from both the government and the new Broad Front Left.
Third, the Broad Front received as a slap in the face the crushing defeat of the proposal for a new constitution on September 4, 2022 (62%/38%), a text for which it played without considering the consequences and without considering the consequences to imagine .possibility of failure. Fourth, an exaggerated emphasis on identity politics, which has led to the abandonment of the power of the universal (e.g. the idea of homeland, given on the right), to be corrected by the implementation of social-democratic policies by socialists and communists (the shortening of the working day to 40 hours is a good example of the success of an issue directed by a communist minister).
In all these things the trace of the broad front is not perceived, another paradox of an experiment directed by this new left, but in the harsh reality of facts the protagonists are others: the old left finding a second wind in the midst Storm, which is an interesting experiment.
Alfredo Joignant is a Chilean sociologist and political scientist