To make an understanding with a certain approach towards some type of prospective rationality, we have to understand that each region has its own characteristics. AND South America, of course, it has its peculiarities.
Without entering into a historicist perspective, during the current century a diversity of progressive governments, with deep pre-electoral philosophical flirtations under radical left proclamations, they ended up amalgamating themselves to systemic logic. With more or less luck, with more or less political and managerial capacity.
Too the right had some chances; Nevertheless, their failures led to more frequent alternations than desired by the more conservative wing of their respective societies. It is that in a subcontinent where inequality reigns, the fatigue of the forgotten and impoverished masses generally ends up redoubling the bet and the desire for change. This despite ignorance and promiscuous media hoaxes.
Today is the case of Chile, a nation that faces its most uncertain presidential election in a long time this Sunday. Not only because for the first time in 16 years nor Sebastian Piñera ni Michelle bachelet are presented in the race, but because in addition to their sides, the Christian Democrat Yasna Provoste and the conservative Sebastian SichelThey cannot get their feet off the plate with their respective pseudo reformist warmth and accusations of corruption. All this at a time when it is not known for sure where the post-2019 social boiling will be redirected, in a context of price tensions (inflation of 5.8% so far this year, almost double the average Chilean of the last decade), a socio-economic adjustment based on the untouchable neoliberal model, and an immigration / Mapuche phenomenon of flaccid control, among others.
Under this scenario, the former student leader Gabriel Boric, who represents the leftmost coalition of the Frente Amplio – which also has the Communist Party as an ally – and strongly supports a broad revision of the new constitution achieved with the regrettable blood shed after the tragic events of two years ago, and the far right Jose Antonio Kast, with an anti-abortion, homophobic discourse and defender of the policies carried out during the last dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, are ahead and will surely contest the ballotage.
It is clear that the social outbreak dramatically hastened many social, political and economic processes that were dormant; who says if the ticket dilemma had not existed if they had ever been fired. But history is already written and now it will depend on whether the déjá vu of nationalist nostalgia will prevail based on order and macroeconomic stability, or on the contrary, the role of young people and their involvement in the change from below that was born from the anger and discontent derived from the ineffectiveness to end the poverty and inequities that the Concertación could not even abate – by action or omission, depending on who tells the story and from the perspective that it is observed -, and that led to the current turning point that will be reflected in the polls this Sunday.
Crossing the mountain range, in our country an urban and cosmopolitan phenomenon of high content and technological involvement has developed in the last decade that has permeated the benefit of the extreme libertarian right; and, on the other hand, the recovery of the left of a working class, female and young vote disenchanted with progressivism that has been inert for years to combat unemployment, low wages, the loss of purchasing power in the face of persistent inflation, and growing inequality.
There is also another reality: despite being impregnated with baths of theoretical ideology, both fundamentalist poles handle the new politics to their fingertips, the daily agenda of specific issues, the issues that matter to the mass as individuals – that’s right, even the Its own collectivist left is aggiorna to this ‘novel perspective’ -: the lack of opportunities to develop professionally, care for the environment, a gender right felt as inalienable, etc.
As a rational complement, the sustained growth of both ‘extremist’ parties has more reasons for the eternal failures of the traditional political parties, where the center-right and the center-left have made water in moral and technical terms in the last half century.
Now, is this enough for these political parties to have a real chance of reaching executive power, as happened in the case of Bolsonaro’s Brazil, or will it surely happen in Chile as of 2022?
Hardly. On the one hand, because the lukewarm disenchantment is channeled by the majority through the ballot box. Certain groups that have resistance under the ‘peace of the just’ – or like docile calves – mistakenly combine and merge vehement demands from trade unions, left parties or social organizations, to which is added the relatively recent history of political violence that points to against the verbal or street radicalization of the majorities that they consider ‘fundamentalists without sufficiently valid grounds’.
On the other hand, the chiaroscuro that international experiences on both sides of the poles have had not only generate deep discussions in the sophisticated minority electorate regarding the understanding of political and economic dynamics with theoretical and practical support, but are also frightening at the same time. heard and unknown to the average electorate. Finally, we must also add the preeminence of ‘conservatism in every sense’ – read suburban barons, northern political fiefdoms, a conservative landowning oligarchy that continues to colonize the minds of a dependentista middle class, etc. – that channel the rift within the margins of the status-quo.
Therefore, liquefied in a bipartisan disenchantment that seems to continue for several more years, libertarians and the left will end up playing as partners in the presidential elections of 2023. But surely, unlike in the past, their quantitative growth will represent a more annoying stumbling block that will require a political effort even greater than the one desired by the FDT and JXC. It is that in the dispute for the electorate and under the inexorable flirtation of politics to achieve power, the search for alliances and consensus could be innocuous for the – still – majority parties, before those who say they do not negotiate their values under the reigning immorality.
International Analyst, Twitter: @CafuDiego
Source From: Ambito
