In what was expected to be a narrow victory, Gabriel Boric was elected president of Chile with a difference of twelve points (56%-44%) over José Antonio Kast. Before Sunday’s election, some saw this second round as a choice between an ultramontane and radical status quo (Kast) or revolutionary structural changes (Boric). But we shouldn’t expect either of them. Either of the two potentially elected candidates would have to coexist and agree with other democratically constituted powers with different political sensibilities that would temper any decision.
However, choosing the president is not trivial, especially in a country like Chile, where what is at stake is the model of the country that one wants to build. This was reflected in the runoff campaign, when one candidate, Boric, focused his speech on inclusion of marginalized groups, redistribution and environmental sustainability, while the other, Kast, proposed a “stop” on the rights agenda, economic growth based on shrinkage of the State and an iron fist, limiting immigration and even Chile’s departure from international organizations.
Boric moderated his speech and showed himself to be a mirror of European (mainly Nordic) and South American social democratic governments, such as the Frente Amplio Uruguay. Kast, on the other hand, declared himself an admirer of Donald Trump and called to form a kind of international coalition with Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orbán in Hungary, Kaczyński in Poland, and even explicitly declared his nostalgia for Italy some time ago, when the Northern League, with Salvini at its head, had a privileged position in that government.
Chile is ending an electoral cycle that began with the October 2020 referendum and its clear popular demand for a new Constitution written by a directly elected Constituent Convention. The grueling electoral cycle –we went to the polls seven times in 14 months– began after a broad cross-party agreement in November 2019, after what was called the October social explosion.
Since then, regional governors, mayors, councilors, voters, senators and deputies have been elected, and now the president. All that remains is to decide in the output plebiscite, in the middle of next year, whether to accept the draft of the new Constitution that is currently being drafted. Otherwise, the current Constitution, written during the dictatorial government of Augusto Pinochet and marginally adjusted to democracy, will prevail.
In addition to the result, voter participation was remarkable. The big question of the day was whether the electorate would be more like the 2020 referendum or the first round of presidential elections in November. Even with the data still very recent, everything indicates that they were mobilized as in the first round. Overall, turnout has declined since the transition and has recently reached a plateau of around 50% of the electorate. In this second round, it reached 55%. Although this is the highest of the cycle, it is still relatively low given the context sensitivity and criticality of the decisions.
Boric is immersed in a very complex political landscape. The president will face a dangerously fragmented parliament, where he will have particular difficulty dealing with the Senate, as he is far from the majorities needed to pass meaningful policies. He will also have to deal with authorities in the various territorial subdivisions who do not necessarily have a national political reference point and with whom the cost of negotiation will be extremely high. To make matters worse, the subnational authorities are not aligned with each other: that is, mayors and governors of different political colors coexist in the same territory. At the municipal level alone, nearly a third of mayors are independent outside the pacts, that is, purely independent.
The president will also have to coexist with a Convention (also fragmented) which, although it has lost some of its initial mystique and momentum, remains a key player in shaping Chile’s future. The Convention is increasingly aware that if a maximalist project advances, the possibility of rejection in the outgoing referendum is high, and if a minimalist project advances, it increases the frustration of those who were, ultimately, the catalysts of the process. The process is also surrounded by a cloud of uncertainty, as in this election voting will be mandatory, meaning that half of the electorate that consistently refuses to participate will be forced to vote.
The future government will not only have to accommodate all clock-accurate institutions, but it will also have to deal with urgencies that it cannot simply “surf the wave” about. Difficult decisions will have to be made. Perhaps the most urgent have to do with the pandemic and its economic and social effects. Economically, Chile is experiencing record inflation, low levels of investment and low levels of productivity.
Social benefits are becoming more imperative every day and there is not much room to continue withdrawing from pension savings (there have already been three voluntary withdrawals of 10% each into individual savings accounts), which is possibly also pushing inflation up. Chile needs to grow again and, for that to happen, we need to start the engines and create the conditions for stability to generate the necessary confidence.
On the other hand, although the pandemic has allowed current authorities to show great logistical capacity in relation to the vaccination campaign, it is undeniable that Covid-19 dealt a heavy blow to society in addition to the economy; something that is evident, for example, in all the challenges posed by the education and mental health of children and young people in the pandemic (issues that were surprisingly absent from the electoral campaign).
Other significant themes are public security (which would include the police and their reform, organized crime and drug trafficking), Araucanía (a region that is still in a state of emergency), an issue that indirectly includes the relationship between the state. Chilean and indigenous peoples. Not to mention immigration… With more than 1.5 million new residents, Chile is today one of the countries with the highest percentage of immigrants in relation to its population on the continent.
Finally, Chile is rethinking and redesigning itself, and its fate will be fundamentally linked to the result of the 2022 referendum. However, regardless of the result of next year, the leitmotiv of the immediate and future times has more to do with the sober management of expectations , both of the winners and the losers. The challenges that Boric will have to face are colossal.
.
