The constituent process and elections in Chile are making the left ecstatic. The narrative on the left says that the Chilean people woke up from their trance and decided to exercise their constituent power, making a new Constitution radically different from the one inherited by Pinochet and his neoliberal economists. The country will rid itself of the taint of private pension that has pushed elderly people into poverty and will guarantee free services to all.
Crowning the Chilean spring, the second round of presidential elections, this Sunday (19), could bring to power a young socialist, who will implement a reform agenda, closing the social divide. It is the dawn of an era.
The reading on the left is, of course, wrong. His only success is Pinochet’s conviction. Human rights violations must not be tolerated — and here, it is impossible not to remember that the left has always praised authoritarian regimes, as long as they were sympathetic to their ideals. The mark of the democratic right, in turn, must be the total rejection of authoritarianism. Don’t compromise on human rights violations, period.
Aside from the condemnation of authoritarianism, the rest of the left’s analysis is fiction. Chile is a country infinitely more prosperous than its neighbors. Argentina embraced populism, with terrible results. Brazil is a country strangled by the state bureaucracy and unable to grow. Venezuela is only a country worthy of praise for those who place their ideological kinks above any objective analysis.
Chile, on the other hand, adopted measures of economic orthodoxy that made it the country with the best social development in Latin America. Of course, there are problems. Elderly people are right to protest under-retirement; in the same way, it is necessary that the poorest be guaranteed even more access to social services. A prosperous country does not abandon anyone.
Such problems could be solved by reforms, but the Chilean people decided to exercise their constituent power, which is a legitimate option, since the people are the only holders of such power. Adopting, however, an inflamed rhetoric in favor of a bloated state that must provide everything free of charge will give Chile a constitutional order —and, consequently, economic and social indicators— more like that of its neighbors. It will be a huge setback.
It is worth asking whether left-wing analysts who praise the “Chilean spring” are interested in the well-being of the Chilean people — and the well-being of any people depends on economic prosperity — or just want to use the constituent process to fulfill their narrative of defeat of the “neoliberal model”, even at the expense of the economic prosperity that marked Chile as an exception in Latin America.
We wish the Chilean people luck in their legitimate exercise of constituent power, but, above all, we wish them to exercise it with caution. Enough of populist adventures in Latin America.
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