Page 6 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, MAY 2021, (English)

Political Earthquake in Chile
The mega-election in mid-May shook the foundations of the establishment. The big losers were the traditional parties, especially the right. The independent candidacies, which arose from the social protest, and the anti-liberal left advanced on the two great coalitions that administered the country since the return of democracy, with an unprecedented representation in the 155-member assembly. Citizen participation barely exceeded 43 percent.
An unexpected and uncertain turn to the left made Chile in the recent mega-elections held for two days in mid-May, in which the gure of the regional governor was elected for the rst time as well as the members of the Constitutional Convention, mayors and councilors throughout the country.
For many, the results obtained are de nitely and absolutely a change of era.
As noted by the prominent national political commentator Ascanio Cavallo: “The political system in force in Chile since the end of the dictatorship has ended; now the continuity between the disruption of October 18th and the process followed since then is visible. Just to remember it, in those days the President believed that his great moment was yet to come, that the boom in the economy was going to explode and that citizens should only have a little patience. More patience. He did not know, as no one in the political world knew, that patience was full and that ve cents on the dollar, or perhaps something else, would be enough toblowitup.“
For the right, speci cally, the election was an electoral debacle, a true cataclysm with catastrophic results, the worst obtained in the last 30 years, which, in some way signals that there is little possibility of retaining the government in
the presidential elections next November. One of its greatest defeats happened in the elections to determine who would be the members of the Constitutional Convention, which as of June will have to draft the new Fundamental Charter of the country, which will de ne the new Chile. In that electoral instance, the conservative conglomerates obtained 37 of the 155 seats, which left those groups below the third of representation necessary to veto the rules of the text. That places the right as a small island, cornered in an organ dominated by the left.
The entity that will be installed in June, will discuss fundamental issues such as the economic development model, the political regime and the government system, decentralization and, among other issues, regionalization. In these fundamental areas, the right will not have the strength to negotiate, because it has only 23 percent of the votes in the Constituent Assembly. This percentage is insu icient to veto certain articles, since two thirds will be necessary to reach agreements. If the results of the lists of the left, center-left and those of the independents without parties are added, the current opposition will dominate the constituent body by far.
Loss of Municipalities
The results for the right were not only negative in the election of the constituents, but also in the municipal elections, where the right let go 50 of the 345 municipalities and lowered its presence in terms of the number of councilors. Thus, in this area, the right reaches 33,14 percent in votes; the center-left 34,15 percent and the left 23,77 percent. The Communist Party, PC, achieved 9, 23 percent, a growth over six percent, obtained in the 2016 elections. Communes such as Santiago, Maipu, Ñuñoa and Viña del Mar, which were in the hands of the classic right-wing parties like Renovacion Nacional, RN, and the Unión Democrática Independiente, UDI, in some cases for more than 20 years, ended up giving up their municipal seats to the opposition. Chile Vamos, the o icial alliance, the union of both conglomerates, had 22 of the 52 municipalities in the Metropolitan Region, of which eight must be handed over to its rivals. What happened in the commune of Santiago became one of the great surprises of the day. Felipe Alessandri was one of the strong gures on the right in these elections, given that in 2016 he dealt a powerful blow to the then leftist mayor Carolina Toha when she