By Marco Teruggi on September 6, 2022,
photo: Pablo Rojas Madariaga
Sunday night saw a resounding triumph for the challengers of a new Constitution that would distance the magna carta from the dictatorial traces. It was a lacerating blow for those who staged the revolts of 2019 and for the brand new government of President Gabriel Boric. However it is still unclear what the political future will be in a country that is not yet able to resolve recent and historical crises.
Sunday night ended with honking horns and Chilean flags. It was not to celebrate the new Constitution but to celebrate its rejection at the ballot box of a long awaited plebiscite.
“He who does not leap is a communist”, was one of the hits of the night. The result was unappealable: 61.86% in favor of the Rejection and 38.14% for the Approval. A blow. Disconcert and frustration was expressed in small handfuls of demonstrators who went to Plaza Baquedano, popularly renamed Dignidad in 2019, under jets of water from the classic “pacos culeaos”, now no longer strong, as the sign of a new political stage.
No poll had foreseen such a great distance, neither the most pessimistic militant, nor the mathematical prediction models disseminated in the last days. The difference was not only of more than 20 points of difference, but it occurred in the highest vote in the history of the country: 13,018,703 voters, 85% of participation, 30% more than the 55% of the second round of the 2021 presidential elections that declared Gabriel Boric as the winner. The vote in favor of Apruebo was about 200,000 votes more than those obtained by Boric. Compulsory voting, reestablished after 10 years, brought more than 4.5 million new voters to the polls who widely favored the Rejection.
The celebration at the Rejection campaign command was with champagne, lit speeches, national flags, in keeping with the first political victory of the right after the revolt of 2019. José Antonio Kast, with little presence in recent weeks, took the opportunity to return to the stage. But not all those who led the campaign against the new text presented themselves or recognize themselves as right-wing. This heterogeneity may explain in part why the Rejection won, something that seemed improbable in the 2020 plebiscite, when Boric was elected in December, or took office in March surrounded by symbolism and speeches of change.
Another central reason lies in what was not done, or was not achieved, or failed on the part of the Apruebo campaign. Who was really the bearer of that flag? The parties that make up the national government, the government itself? Who drafted the Constitution? The disorganized and mobilized subject that, for example, campaigned against Kast in December? The last minute incorporations such as Michelle Bachelet? Cross accusations multiplied, as it usually happens in all defeats.
Passing of political responsibility
Two explanations or accusations predominated in the Apruebo camp. One line of interpretation focused the responsibilities on the Constitutional Convention and its mistakes: the over-representation of leftist sectors, particularly independents, and the consequent excess of radicalism in several articles, with the incorporation of matters without consensus such as plurinationality or indigenous justice. In short, a text too far to the left, although each article was voted by two thirds of the Convention, in a society with strong conservative and neo-liberal roots.
Another view, on the other hand, focused the responsibility on the government: its inconsistency with the agenda of social demands, such as those arising from the October days. A president with low approval -around 37%- who transferred his bad performance to the vote of a Constitution that the same government had criticized under the idea of “approving to reform”, committing itself to modify it in case of success.
If for one sector the problem was the excess of leftist agendas, the “maximalism” referred to by Boric on Sunday night, for the other it was lost due to the lack of a decided agenda of changes by a government that keeps too many elements of continuity with the former Concertación.
The result hit both of them. The subjects that played a leading role in the October days and were strongly represented in the Convention are now demobilized, as a result of the change of stage and the inability to reach a political translation for that multiple set of demands. There are also notorious errors. The government, with only five months in the Palacio de la Moneda, is weakening and going through complex labyrinths as it has to maneuver with two coalitions of parties within itself (with the incorporation of actors from the former Concertación in key positions), while it debates between the need to give answers to agendas of order and the promises of transformation.
The Counter-offensive
The right wing lost the initiative in October 2019 and regained it with yesterday’s victory on Sunday. Three years in which it went backwards again and again, except for its representation in the Legislative Branch, particularly in the Senate. The plebiscite of the new Constitution was the hinge point: its approval was the way to conclude what started with the outbreak and Boric’s victory, to give way to the new stage of progressive implementation of the text. Its defeat, however, was a coup de grace for the different sectors of the left and a turning point for the recovery of the opposition forces.
The campaign for the Rejection began early, months ago. On the one hand, it deployed the campaign of fear, plagued with fake news that targeted central issues for the majority: the fear of losing housing, savings, security. The media offensive charged a radicalism to the Constitution, far from what really exists, focused its shots in places felt by the majority, simple to understand and fear, in the face of a Convention with communication failures dragged for months. The campaign of the Approval, on the contrary, started in the last weeks and on the defensive, seeking to dismantle the framework of interpretation installed by the promoters of the rejection.
The conservative strategy had a great success when it correctly read that the Constitution originally drafted in 1980 during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship -with numerous subsequent modifications- had been defeated at the ballot box of the 2020 plebiscite and decided to abandon its defense. That is why the campaign raised the need to “reject in order to reform” and expanded the actors who led it: the right was placed in a second plane of protagonism, to include sectors that presented themselves as center-left. “I voted No in 1988, I approve in 2020, but now I vote Reject”, was one of the speeches heard on Sunday night.
Neither the 1980 Constitution nor Pinochetism won then. The Rejection campaign came out of a clearly right-wing position and sought to question society in a more transversal way. “A change, yes, but not this one”, was the message headed with centrist faces.
That strategy, accompanied by the avalanche of fake news denounced over and over again, had its result on Sunday night. El Apruebo only won in eight communes and by a small margin. In some provinces, as in the north and south of the country, the Rejection won with about 70%.
Who Won
The constituent process is not over, it will be necessary to elect a new Convention to draft a new text. This is clear from the speeches of the different political parties, from the Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and its right-wing allies, to the government. President Boric had already anticipated that in case of defeat of the new text, the mandate of the plebiscite of 2020, where the majority voted in favor of a new Constitution to be drafted by a Constitutional Convention, should be respected.
Several questions appear in this scenario. One of them is whether the possibility of participation of independent lists will be modified, that is to say, to present themselves outside the political parties, as occurred in the previous Convention, a mechanism that allowed numerous sectors mobilized in the streets to enter the then elected body. The president of the Socialist Party, Paulina Vodanovic, in favor of Apruebo, criticized the existence of independents. The new process that opens will be agreed in Congress and could provide a renewed centrality to the parties after the challenge born in 2019, with the enough to the model and its representatives.
The crossroads is complex. The government already had visible fragilities, expressed in its disapproval levels, the lack of clear achievements, flags to be raised, as well as the loss of agenda management. A probable change in the cabinet could give a re-oxygenation in order to advance in this second moment: negotiate with the set of parties the way towards a new Convention, the call for new constituent elections, to finally go towards a new exit plebiscite. Everything seems to indicate that in this “second opportunity” there would be a greater presence of the right wing.
Questions remain on the table: Who really won Sunday night? It is clear that the strategy of the Rejection campaign did so categorically. But it did not automatically the current model, as well as neither its defenders embodied in the opposition parties, nor its ideas on what contents a new Constitution should have.
The crisis opened in 2019 was not closed with the election of Boric, neither with the defeat of the constitutional text of this last Sunday night.
How to achieve a new Constitution that obtains the approval of the majority and at the same time breaks open the neoliberal barriers that prevent fundamental changes? That is perhaps the greatest challenge in a Chile that at this time is searching for answers.
Source: revista crisis translation Internationalist 360