An avalanche of votes that hurt traditional Chilean politics

Santiago, Chile.- With two right-wing governments and a frustrated alternation, it’s well worth a historical examination of what’s going on in Chile. There are two looks that are several years apart. The right won 26% in the first presidential election of the transition in 1989, while yesterday in the constitutional elections it obtained a result of 25%. A vote much more unexpected than 32 years ago, but which reflects resounding stagnation.

While the economic right reigned at ease with Augusto Pinochet, the political right returned to power when Sebastián Piñera took office in 2010. His last experience was with Jorge Alessandri in 1964, and the arrival of a long-time businessman raised some hopes in Chilean society. Piñera, for many, was the promise and reflection of the “central”, “moderate” and “non-Pinochet” right.

We therefore thought that this alternation of power sealed the consolidation of Chilean democracy. However, the economic crises generated protests instead of the consolidation of a model, and it all culminated in 2019 with a social epidemic that took two million people to the streets of the country and to summon a political class who did not know. not how to interpret the changes. .

Thus, and with the political forces threatened, and with the people raised in the midst of an unprecedented social outbreak, a pact was sealed that would calm the waters and pave the way for the drafting of a new Constitution.. 80% of the Chilean people ratified this impulse with a plebiscite and the mandate was clear: from October 25, 2020, the way to develop a new Magna Carta.

And it happened on this May 15 and 16, when the voters who will write the Constitution were elected and in another context: in the same election that the mayors, councilors and governors were elected.

But there is something about the process that cannot be ignored. In this election, declared by the entire political class as “the most important of our time”, only four out of ten Chileans voted, which signifies the first failure of a state incapable of informing the people.. We have witnessed negligence in not knowing and not being able to communicate a political fact of this magnitude and we still maintain a voluntary vote that bleeds Chilean democracy.

However, the 41% who voted turned the situation around. The political center has disappeared and the right has itself been reduced to nothing. It was the independents who won 48 seats out of 155, and a so-called “people’s left”, which elected 27 representatives, who became the new protagonists of Chilean politics, while the transitional parties died: the Christian Party. -democrat of Frei and Aylwin; the Party for Democracy, led by Ricardo Lagos, and the Radical Party. The only survivor is the Socialist Party, the same that catapulted Michelle Bachelet.

Now a new political era begins which coincides with the looming post-pandemic period and the start of the new civilizational era that we see through the window: more plurality, more fairness, more transparency, more respect and more. of dignity.

Voters in Chile, as in Peru and Ecuador, desperately seek representatives who defend the interests of the people, not the interests of a few. All this brings down parties, old conglomerates and established powers. It is the sign of the times, the one from which the word “replace” acquires greater force.

In Peru, the first round of presidential elections buried 16 political parties, and here in Chile the Constituent Convention election liquidated at least four conglomerates. The power of indigenous peoples emerged and the power of women increased. Elections in the region, like that of Brazil, will set the tone for how demands for greater plurality are formulated.

It’s not a fight between left and right, although the news agenda continues to call it that. What happened in Chile reflects a new vision of the world: it is the struggle for the representation of the plurality of what each country is and the struggle for the representation of sovereignty for the installation of true sovereign democracies. .

The author is an economist and director of Latinobarómetro