Page 7 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, MAY 2021, (English)

obtained 46,4 percent of the preferences. For the rst time since 1888, when the commune elected its first mayor, the municipality of Santiago will be in the hands of the Communist Party. This, in addition, strengthens the party of the president of the PC, Daniel Jadue.
What Country do Chileans Want
As another very relevant Chilean commentator, Héctor Soto puts it: “In a way, looking at the painting from the perspective of the right, for the rst time since the return to democracy, Chilean politics will jump, so to speak, into the void and without net. In what sense? In the following one: years ago, the appointed senators neshed and the binomial system ended; it is clear that the cycle of factual politics is over and that even the Constitutional Court ceased to be what it was. It is also a fact of the cause that the right lost the third. The way, therefore, is clear for the majority to express themselves without major obstacles and for Chilean society to elevate those agreements, norms and institutions which are attended by at least two thirds of the constituents. It is also true that Chile today is closer than ever to electing a communist president. And that there is discontent with the model much more widespread than the current distribution of forces in Parliament suggests. However, there is still a lot of nebula about where Chileans want to live. What kind of society do we want? Apparently, not the model that came out of the transition and that brought so many bene ts at the time. Apparently, not the market society that we were for more than 30 years, dynamic, but at the same time responsible for great inequalities. The demand for a greater welfare state is widespread. But, does that mean that we want to go to a society closed to the outside, predominantly state-owned, with little space for entrepreneurship and rather narrow margins of competition? What is the most similar thing to interpret us? From good faith and without bias, to pre-73 Chile, to Peronist Argentina, to Australia in recent years, to the Nordic countries, to the museum experience of socialist nations?”
The Chilean Left
But it was not only the right who did badly. The center-left of Chile, which ruled the country between 1990 and 2010 under the so- called Concertación block, had an important challenge in these elections since it would measure its strength with that of the left- wing axis made up of the Communist Party (PC) and the radical left, the Frente Amplio (FA), a coalition that erupted a couple of years ago and has come to challenge the power of traditional political forces.
Thus, the result they obtained both in the
Constituent Convention and in the rest of the regional o ices generated strong expectations in the sector.
But this time the preferences of Chileans on the left was not on their side: not only did they obtain fewer seats in the Constituent Convention than the Approve Dignity list (which includes the PC and the FA), but they were also surpassed in important governorships and municipalities.
On the contrary, candidates from the Frente Amplio surprised by succeeding in places such as the Metropolitan Region, or municipalities such as Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, strengthening the idea that the most radical left is gaining ground over the center. The left tectonic plates in Chile have not stopped moving. An alliance between center- left socialists with the communists and the Broad Front with a view to the presidential elections was alive for a few hours. This would have originated a historic agreement of the left without the center, something that has not happened for half a century in Chile.
The Triumph of the Independent
Another of the great surprises was the performance of the independents who achieved an unprecedented result and will be the rst force of the Constituent Convention, imposing themselves on the traditional parties. The candidates in that category accumulated 45 seats and respond to various sensitivities. The non-militants were mainly organized on two lists, the so- called People’s List, which emerged in the framework of the social protests of 2019 and which managed to articulate a social and political organization, reached 27 seats in the convention (17,4 percent) and the list of Independents for a new Constitution, meanwhile, was left with 11 seats in the assembly (7 percent), a non-militant center- left group.
As Cavallo expresses: “At last on October 18thThe People’s List acquired a face, that heterogeneous group that was not in any agreement, that expressly rejected it and, in the end, took advantage of it with a sagacious electoral strategy, but that is not a work of pure political engineering. The People’s List is anti-party, anti-institutional and anti-systemic, and at the same time heterodox, multifaceted: the nucleus of 18-O is recognized there, which was so di icult to see because for long months it was covered by other things, the show, the impersonation, violence. Along with that eruption, all the parties fell”.
The independents shook the Chilean political board. The success of the independents in the Chilean elections is directly related to the crisis of representativeness of the political parties.
Governors for the Metropolitan Region
For the immediate future within the tight Chilean electoral calendar, in less than two weeks the second round for governor of the Metropolitan Region will be disputed, a crucial battle in the center-left. Karina Oliva is the candidate of the radical left Frente Amplio and Partido Comunista block that is ghting inch by inch with Claudio Orrego of the Christian Democrats for the position of the capital. The 35-year-old political scientist was born Puente Alto, with her grandparents living in a camp that bordered on Bajos de Mena, a low-income camp, kind of shanty town. She is the daughter of a taxi driver and a teacher and mother of a girl. This is a pro le that she has enhanced in her campaign, contrasting her biography with that of Orrego, the son of a former parliamentarian, a collaborator of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva. He was trained at the University Academy of Christian Humanism.
This is part of the dispute for the hegemony of the left between the Constituent Unit (ex-Concertación) and Frente Amplio-PC, which won the rst round in the constituent. Behind the election is the duel of the current president of the Senate, Yasna Provoste (DC) and the current mayor of Recoleta, Daniel Jadue (PC), with a view to the presidential election, due to the political-electoral weight that the rst governor of the Metropolitan Region, the second most voted authority after the President.
In the rst round, Orrego has already become, with 657,000 votes, the most voted candidate who has not run for the Presidency since 1990; record so far held by Eduardo Frei Ruiz- Tagle in the 1989 Senate (608,000). Oliva was not far when gathering 601,000 votes.
As a general summary, it could be said that the only coalition that managed to meet expectations is the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party, which although it did not improve its result with respect to parliamentary representation, but given that it was the only coalition that managed to sustain results is obviously a winner
The conclusion of this election has an expected consequence: the de nition of the presidential candidacies.
In Chile, historically the elections for mayors and councilors have been a kind of “thermometer” to measure the political preferences of the electorate in the face of presidential elections, which always take place shortly afterwards.
Thus, six months after Chile elects the next head of state in November 2021, the trends will be particularly relevant for those who plan to run for president.
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