Salvador Martí and Puig *

Chile has recently had a very busy and above all contradictory political life. Truth be told, what the Andean country is experiencing is the exhaustion of a model of coexistence that has its political and institutional roots in Pinochet’s dictatorship and its transition to democracy. In fact, in Chile, no one questioned the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democracy, but it was an accident that the dictatorial regime did not foresee as a result of the unexpected defeat of the plebiscite that it believed it would win in 1989.

As a result of the above, Chile still has a Constitution inherited from an authoritarian period, and an ultra-liberal economic model in which (among many other factors) education and public health are “paid for” and pensions are managed by the market and so a woman earns less if she contributed as much as and a man, because he has a statistically longer life expectancy.

There were no diversions in Chile

So, regardless of who has ruled since 1990, the model inherited from Pinochetism has failed to change. This was the root of the dissatisfaction of many parts of the citizenry (especially the youngest) who saw that institutional politics had very little room to change things. Dissatisfaction that erupted more than a decade ago with a revolt by high school students and continued to worsen until 2019, when protests took to the streets of the capital. Then conservative President Sebastián Piñera promised to write a new constitution.

This promise was a hope and a mirage at the same time, as many people gave magical results to the constitution process. A kind of refoundation of the state and Chilean society, not taking into account two aspects: that, in the meantime, a complex reality had to be managed in the context of a very serious health and economic crisis, and that the reality of a country was not transformed by writing a document, but could only be changed through political by the will of many sectors.

Tailor-made human rights

Since then, electorally speaking, everything has happened: the presidential election in which the candidate of the left, Gabrijel Borić, won, two plebiscites (one to change the Constitution and the other to reject the draft Constitution) and two elections to elect members of the constituent council (the first in which the left is largely also won the last one ―held last Sunday, May 7― in which the extreme right had a large majority).

In just over two years, Chile has gone from the white hope of the alternative left (with a young president trained in social movements) to the authoritarian threat of the radical right with Trumpist and Bolsonaro roots. For this reason, many analysts today wonder how to elect a constitutional assembly with an absolute majority of left-wing independent representatives in 2021, and a new constitutional assembly with a right-wing majority, led by the Pinochetist-inspired republican Zabava, two years later.

It is obvious that the victory of the extreme right is related to some kind of reactionary state of mind that rules the world, where discontent, anger and frustration are channeled into figures like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro or Giorgio Meloni. Namely, the winner of the last election race, José Antonio Kast, belongs to that ideological family and, despite his “anti-political” discourse, has held public office since 1996, always hand in hand with the conservative and traditional party UDI, and that his brother and mentor was Pinochet’s minister.

But beyond this global ideological wave, the May 7 results are also linked to the fact that the most relevant campaign issues in this election were those that typically favor the right: immigration, security and inflation. The arrival, over the years, of Venezuelan immigrants has caused a flourishing of racist discourse calling for the borders to be closed. Likewise, growing concerns about rising crime (many of which are linked to drug networks) and deteriorating security have led to a welcome return to the “firm hand” discourse always used by the radical right. And the problem of inflation and high living costs, a consequence of the international recessionary situation, has eroded the Government of President Borić.

But these two issues are related to the institutional framework in which the elections were held. According to the electoral law, the 16 districts, which are very small and with an open proportional formula, led to the overrepresentation of the radical right of the Republican Party, which with 35.6% of the votes achieved almost half of the representation, while the traditional formations of the center, represented by the Todo por Chile coalition, did not did not receive a single representative even though they received 10% of the vote. In addition, the mandate of “compulsory voting” was added to this institutional format, which led to the election of a part of the citizens who normally do not vote, and who, when they do, seem to opt for the right-wing populist discourse.

On the other hand, the left will have to carry out self-criticism, because the defeat is not only to blame for the center or the powerful. Truth be told, the previous convocation of the Assembly, with the majority of members from the social left, did not have the capacity to manage the previous mandate. The previous process of drafting the draft constitution was infected with a tragic combination of maximalism, media overexposure and, to a certain extent, frivolity. 20% of canceled and empty votes on May 7 is an expression of the fatigue that a part of citizens accumulates with the work of their politicians.

But Chile’s constitutional process is not over. The newly elected Constituent Assembly will have to work on a draft of the basic law that will be prepared by an expert council made up of academics. Finally, the Chilean people must return to the polls in December to agree (or not) on a new draft constitution, to decide whether to accept it.

The paradox of this new situation is that President Borić – after learning the result – suggested to the right that it should not do the same as it did in the previous component and that it should seek consensus. In the meantime, the formation of Castes, who did not want the new Constitution, will have to lead the component.

In any case, there are those who assimilate these results to the beginning of the counter-revolutionary phase. If the elections on May 15 and 16, 2021 for the election of the conventional first constitutional assembly and the victory of Gabrijelo Borić on December 19 of the same year in the presidential elections meant “Chilean spring”, the results of the latest elections seem to indicate the arrival of autumn. Or, as a lover of historical comparisons would say (and referring to the French Revolution): the process of authoritarian closure has begun in Chile: the “Thermidorian” phase has begun. (OR)

Salvador Martí i Puig is a professor of political science at the University of Girona and a member of the Center for International Relations in Barcelona (Cidob). Doctor of C. politics and administration. Master of Latin American Studies. Research on the process of democratization in Latin America.