Chile: Yasna Provoste is the new letter of the former Concertation for the presidential elections | Former Minister of Bachelet and current President of the Senate

From Santiago

The victory of Christian Democrat and Senate President Yasna Provoste in the center-left primaries grouped together under the name of Constituent Unity organized across Chile on Saturday did not really surprise anyone. Even his own rivals, Carlos Maldonado (Radical Party) first and Paula Narváez (Socialist Party) then recognized the victory when even 50% of the tables were not counted.

Strictly speaking, it was a “citizen consultation” organized in record time (three weeks and with volunteer activists from the conglomerate), without the participation of the Electoral Service or with televised propaganda and an unusual Saturday. Although the low turnout was underlined – 100,000 votes for a total of two million ballots printed – the limited publicity of the elections (where activists and the general public could participate) and the first heavy rains of the month which particularly affected the southern center of the country, clearly influenced the participation.

This emergency format, born from the impossibility for these parties – which formed the nucleus of the Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia which ruled Chile after the end of the dictatorship in 1989 – to reach an agreement with the Frente Amplio and the Partido Communist who finally celebrated their legal primaries as “Approve Dignity” where the broad front Gabriel Boric ended up beating the big favorite in the polls, the Communist Daniel Jadue.

Provoste, who with 70% of the tables scrutinized, scored 60.5% above Narváez (27%) and Maldonado (12.4%) decided to celebrate in the place of his native Vallenar, in northern Chile , specifying that his The project goes for the decentralization of the country and, incidentally, to avoid the joint photography with the defeated candidates.

His speech was addressed directly to the right-wing government Sebastián Piñera, also alluding to the winning candidate of the sector primaries, Sebastián Sichel, who, although he declares himself independent, enjoys great support from businesses and the entire right: “the next government He cannot manage to experiment, to make trial and error, or to pass from one manager to another, from one Sebastian to another …”.

Advantageous disciple of Bachelet

Although all three candidates have participated as ministers at different stages of Michelle Bachelet’s two governments (2006-2010 and 2014-2018) and Narváez’s candidacy was explicitly supported by the former president in January of this year, the winner seems to be the most gifted disciple of the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human RightsFrom the way he talks and waves his hands to his ability to dodge questions without losing his temper, such as when asked why he has not resigned as Speaker of the Senate yet or how long he has had it. needed to announce his candidacy.

Provoste is already an experienced figure capable of negotiating, taking losses and standing up. As Minister of Education, she had to successfully negotiate with students in 2006 during the so-called “penguin revolution” (named after school uniforms used in Chile). However, in 2008, she was constitutionally indicted and fired for irregularities in the payment of scholarships to public and private subsidized schools. A harsher right-wing political operation, according to her and which prevented her from occupying public office until she reinvented herself as a deputy (2014-2018) then a senator from 2018 to today. With a firm vocation but open-minded, it imposed at the beginning of the year the notion of “common minimums” on which the opposition should negotiate with the Piñera government on sensitive subjects such as withdrawals from pensions at the same time as the polls. positioned her as presidential to the surprise of Narváez, who tried to summon – unsuccessfully – citizens who could barely distinguish her name.

Clarity of the Chilean electoral map

This Monday will be the deadline for registering candidatures for the presidential election of November 21, where the election of deputies, senators and regional advisers will also be held. On December 19, the second presidential round is set, if necessary. In this context, it is already quite clear who will be the candidates who will compete for the post: Provoste, Sichel and Boric, representatives of the center-left, right and left, respectively. Although there are other candidates like José Antonio Kast, from the far right The Republican Party is trying to gain space on social networks like Bolsonaro and Trump.

Without doubt, this triumph of Provoste implies a challenge both for her, by preventing the vote of her conglomerate from “escaping” towards her opponents, but also for the latter, who must target sectors of the center but also the new ones. social forces that have emerged. of the social outbreak of October 2019 which have a strong representation in the Constitutional Convention which drafts the Magna Carta which will replace that of 1980.

Although the right has tried to devalue the candidate, to consider her curiously from the “left” instead of the center-left hides a certain concern. Today during the recording of the conglomerate “Chile Podemos +”, the new mutation of the right-wing parties organized around Sichel, Francisco Chahuán president of Renovación Nacional assured: “It is clear that it is a left which improvises, a left which designates at the wrong time its candidate and that it is not able to summon more than 150 thousand Chileans (…) “It is clear that the second round will be held with Gabriel Boric and there two projects of partnership will play out “,

Provoste, who will make his post available on Tuesday, said with a calm worthy of his mentor Bachelet: “I believe that here the races must be given and we are going to enter and we are already entering this process and we are going to give everything completely. Very committed as in each of the tasks that we have done and when you enter a career you do it with who you are.We will work intensely, not only for the left center unit, which is very important. also to summon the majority of citizens who think our country needs “