By Manuel Cabieses Donoso on August 29 , 2020
If it’s hard to understand each other among ourselves, it’s even more complex to explain Chilean politics to a foreign reader.
Let’s give it a try and see.
On October 25, there will be a plebiscite held in Chile in which more than 14 million citizens will have the right to decide whether a new constitution will be drawn up, or whether we will continue with the authoritarian scraps of the 1980 constitution. It will be the first time that the constitution will be prepared by representatives of the people. Our ten constitutions were written by petty bureaucrats of the government in office at the time.
The longing for a democratic constitution – one that would point us toward laws intended to build a more just society – didn’t drop from the sky last October. It is a demand of the people who come from afar, dragging the mud and blood of the Resistance to the dictatorship. It originated with the Group of 24, who, beginning in 1978 started to discuss a new Constitution. The project of the group of 24 (attorneys who were members of the DC, PR, PS Parties, social democrats, independents and right-wingers critical of the dictatorship) proposed that a Constituent Assembly was a fundamental mechanism of the constitutional process.
This criterion was adopted by a broad political spectrum, from the Christian Democrats (DC) to the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), who proposed it for years in open defiance of the tyranny and it’s Constitution of 1980. So it happened in October 2019 that the slogan of a Constituent Assembly became the cry of millions of voices angry at the corruption and the abuses. Nevertheless, the politicians and the armed forces took their revenge. In March of this year, with the pretext of an imminent coup d’ètat, they converted the Constituent Assembly into a Constitutional Convention and tied it up, hand and foot.
There would be parties that had barely 2% support, and the Congress barely arrived -gasping in exhaustion – at 3% and those controlled the plebiscite. The cutoff would be a two-thirds quorum for initiatives that transgress the boundaries of the politically correct.
The plebiscite – there is no question about this – is a trick to trap and reduce to a minimum any expression of the desire for profound changes that the people are expressing by massive mobilizations and scattered skirmishes throughout the country. The paradox that is hard to explain is that, although we are aware that this is a trap, we must accept the challenge. We have been calling for a Constituent Assembly for half a century now, as a legitimate matrix for a democratic Constitution. We envisioned this as being convened by the people after overthrowing the dictatorship. But history has turned out differently. At this time we are not strong enough to impose this. Rather, we can support a broad democratic movement for the Approval and the Constituent Convention. If we achieve a devastating triumph, we can utilize the accumulated force to impose the election of convention delegates in favor of breaking the two-thirds rule wall.
This is not an easy goal. The tendency to sit out elections is great among youth and people who reject everything to do with political parties. About 70% reject the calls to elections. There are delegates in parliament who represent 1 or 2% of the electorate of their districts. They belong to the same parties who have called for a plebiscite. The convention delegates will be elected according to the rules of the “representatives of the people.” However, there are more than 700,000 “zombie party members” – those who are on the party registers but are inactive – who it will be necessary to convince for the plebiscite to turn into a step forward for democracy.
The split of the right-wing – divided between Rejection and Approval – is a fact that favors the chances of breaking through this trap set by the political upper-class, and going to from there to escalate a process of rebuilding the people’s movement.
Another aspect of the political schizophrenia of Chile is shown by the plan to rebuild the block in power with sectors that are now part of the government as well as those that are now in the opposition. One segment of the right-wing, aware of its extreme poverty of ideas, is carrying out an ambitious project to forge an alliance with the social democrats and the Christian democrats – something that would include the decomposition of the extreme right. This project is encouraged by President Piñera as well as by the class of big business, concerned about the fate of capitalist doctrine in the new Constitution. The electoral strength of the right-wing, which has been maintained for decades at about 40%, is collapsing before their eyes. They need emergency oxygen for their ideas. If Piñera, who in the CEP poll of January had 6% support and in the CADEM poll of August about 20%, gets to finish his term by means of bonuses, subsidies, loans, and food boxes, the 2021 election would be the appropriate moment to try out this formula. The masters of demagoguery would pull out of their hat a set of candidates that would express the interests of the liberal right and the social-democrats.
This tangled and demented political scene occurs because of the absence of a fundamental participant: the Left. A Left option which may arise from the situation surrounding the constitution: to prevent the deceit of the elite from “robbing the eagle’s eggs” again.
Source: Punto Final, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau