Chilean President Gabriel Boric salutes after an act at La Moneda, the seat of government in Santiago August 23, 2022. Esteban Felix (AP)
The left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, who has been in power less than half a year and will govern until March 2026, made the decision to push the constitutional convention, the text he submitted to the country and then a referendum on options issuance, I agree. Despite the President’s recent declarations with a tone of unity regardless of the outcome – “there can be no winners and losers here” – the link between support for the government and the new constitution seems obvious to a majority of citizens. On Saturday evening, Boric sent a new message, this time via social media: “Dear country, tomorrow will be a big day. In Chile, we resolve our differences with more democracy, never with less. I am deeply proud that we have come this far,” he wrote.
In recent months, the polls have shown the direct relationship between the ebb and flow of La Moneda’s popularity and the work of the Convention and later position ahead of the referendum celebrated this Sunday. “They are so doomed to each other that their destinies are inseparable. Gabriel Boric’s government and its constituent process share the same origin and fate,” wrote analyst and philosopher Max Colodro in February, characterizing them as “prodigal sons of the political and cultural changes that Chilean society has been experiencing for more than a year Decade.”
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Some political analysts have even spoken of the government as having collapsed less than six months after taking office on 11/11. one of the closest Boric even before the convention presented the final text a month later. The President himself supported this: “It is evident that the current constitutional framework of the 1980 Constitution stands in the way of some of the reforms that we want to implement.” Spokeswoman Camila Vallejo assured in the same vein at the time that “the government program, its depth, also depends to a large extent on what happens on September 4th”.
Dear country, tomorrow will be a big day. In Chile, we resolve our differences with more democracy, never with less. I am deeply proud that we have come this far.
Tomorrow we will continue together. A hug!
— Font Gabriel Boric (@gabrielboric) September 4, 2022
These statements became nuanced, particularly as La Moneda began to believe – belatedly for some – that it was not impossible for him to get the new constitution rejected, which was not in the plans of the new generation of government leaders.
On July 15 – less than two weeks after the final text was known – Boric announced that if he won the rejection there would be a new constituent process. It was the first time this scenario was admitted by the President, which caused two things: anger on the part of his political blocs – there was a communist leader who even called him a traitor – and at the same time the safe decision to go for the approval of the government, in actions cataloged by non-government backers as “to the limit of right”.
But La Moneda made a decisive decision at the end of July to change its strategy. On the 25th of this month, Boric indicated that “everything can be perfected and we will carry out this process after the referendum”, regarding reforms to improve the Convention proposal. Just days later, however, he changed his mind and began pushing forward the battery of constitutional compromises to improve the Convention’s proposal, which was published on August 11. It was a way of providing guarantees to voters who had doubts about support for the proposal, although part of the political world had questioned the government’s reasons for not engaging in politics before the end of the convention and getting something done by doing so , has never fully understood a better quality text that would convene the majority of citizens.
change of ministers
If adopted, the government will emerge stronger, and the changes the president will have to make in his cabinet – which will likely happen in the next few hours – will be less sweeping than those made by the moderate sectors of the ruling party be demanded. It would be a great endorsement six months after launch, despite the issues he faced (according to the Cadem poll, 39% support Boric’s leadership and 56% oppose it). In this scenario, the left wing of his supporters would try to push the committed change agenda with more vigour.
But the risk seems great: If he loses approval, the Chilean president must be politically capable of acting on Sunday night in order to break away from a major defeat and mobilize a divided citizenry for a new constituent process. The voting bags are big and there is a lot of playing. This is illustrated by a fact repeated by electoral experts these days, who calculate that 65% of the electorate will go to the polls, that is about 10 million citizens. Since the referendum would be decided by a narrow majority, the winning option would receive around 5 million votes. That number is inevitably compared to the 4.6 million people who voted for Boric in the second round, which catapulted him to become the most-elected president in history. If the rejection wins, more people voted for an option that wasn’t the President’s. If approved, La Moneda’s option will have won even more votes than the president in December’s election.
The tensions that will arise from tonight have been verbalized by the leader of the right-wing UDI party, Senator Javier Macaya: in the event of a refusal, he assured during the week that “the government cannot distance itself from the defeat of the approval”, for what he called for his program to be landed, “to start governing” and to focus on the issues that people care about – he says – like citizen safety, the violence in La Araucanía and the cost of living, among others Things.
But there are those who see an opportunity. Economist Andrés Velasco, who will vote to reject, pointed out in a recent interview with EL PAIS that whoever wins, half the country will be unhappy with the outcome. “The process has widened the divisions between people, rather than narrowing them. These are messages that the government must take up. They seem like a complication, but for President Boric they also turn out to be an opportunity. An opportunity to help heal these wounds, rejuvenate his cabinet, recalibrate the coalition that supports him, give more weight to democratic socialism and, in the event of a successful rejection, lead the second phase of the constitutional process together with Congress. ”