There are days of excitement and apprehension in Santiago.
In the streets that have been troubled for so long since October 2019, there are still protests, smaller ones, but also parties and gatherings of politicized young people. The place occupied by the statue of General Baquedano, the epicenter of the demonstrations, is still guarded by the carabineros, and the statue’s pedestal has been painted with the colors of the Ukrainian flag, showing that the place will continue to be used to mark political positions.
At the gates of La Moneda Palace or at the entrance of his new home, in the popular district of Yungay, there are those who bring gifts and letters to Gabriel Boric. Chatting randomly with other inhabitants of the capital, some show distrust. “These kids don’t know what they’re getting into,” they say.
One of the first gestures of the young president was to overturn a hundred cases still incipient against protesters in 2019, but the measure is not enough to release all those behind bars in a way that the new management considers irregular, without trial and under the charge of “inciting violence”.
The president’s gesture was a signal to Congress, after all, it is up to the Senate to approve or reject a pardon for these people. Boric says he “hopes they approve it”, but doesn’t reveal what Plan B will be if it doesn’t happen. Will he use the possibility that the law gives him to give himself a presidential pardon? Will this sound authoritarian or disrespectful towards other institutions? Maybe. That’s why Boric “twists”. The government does not have a majority in Congress.
Among the thousands of catchphrases carved into stone in the streets of Santiago, there is this very prominent request, that Boric “don’t be distracted with political prisoners”. Boric knows that the support of a good part of the more radical left lies in this aspect, and not responding to it in an acceptable time will have a political cost.
But it is in the economic area that their main problems seem to be at the moment. On the one hand, there is a high annual inflation figure, 7.7%. This increase was partly due to the controversial authorization that Congress gave, during the pandemic, for the withdrawal, in quotas of 10%, of pensions that are managed by private funds. Talk to ten people in Santiago and you’ll hear that the ten took away what touched them, whether they were from the left, from the right, poor or rich, politicized or not.
“If no one believes in the system anymore, if it’s the first thing they’re going to redesign in this new model, I’d rather have the money to spend now, to renovate the kitchen or pay my bills,” a friend from the well-informed bubble tells me. “Oh, I took everything out and fixed my whole house, I didn’t have a penny”, says a taxi driver.
The point is that this withdrawal, whose objective was to be an emergency and help contain the impact of the pandemic on the economy, is already in its fourth edition _ each of them must be approved by Congress. With the looting, plus the benefits given by the state to help those who were jobless with the pandemic, consumption increased, and so did prices. Now, Boric, a supporter of state aid, must speak from a different place. As president, he knows the damage that withdrawals do to the economy and condemns what Congress is about to do in the next few weeks: vote to release the fifth retreat.
If this happens, he will have no alternative but to accelerate the tax reform, in which he intends to charge more from the richest, in order to carry out his pension reform, transforming the totally private and unfair model of pensions into one in which the State participates. and a minimum pension to those who are in no condition to contribute anything.
For that, you need to increase the collection. In its favor is the fact that copper, the main product exported by Chile, has a high price on the international market. Even so, gymnastics is complicated. And surprisingly, the once impetuous leftist leader is already being heard asking congressmen for caution and that they please not approve the fifth retreat, just as he did… Piñera, his predecessor.
With the aid packages and economic reactivation, Chile grew 11.9% last year, but for this year, consultants point out that this figure will not exceed 2.9%. Hence, without adjustments or new taxes and investments, the blanket will be short to increase the social blanket and the state’s participation in the economy, as promised by Boric.
Foreign investors have been scared from day one, which has caused shares of Chilean companies on the stock exchanges to plummet in the first few weeks. Since his election, more than $50 billion has left the country. Boric hopes to calm them down by gradualism in the changes and putting a respected technocrat in the post of finance minister, Mario Marcel.
Another clash between what is promised and what is done took place when Boric was informed that one of his ministers had invited a Jesuit priest to join a program for the construction and distribution of affordable housing. Boric was quick, but the press had time to question and criticize him. It is okay to have said from the beginning that the government is secular, but is it correct to veto choices of ministers who were given carte blanche? Is there a sign of authoritarianism there? It was noted.
But the most tense episode of the week was the attempt to send Interior Minister Izkia Siches, the most important government post after Boric, to one of the regions most affected by the violence and which remains in a state of exception, that is, militarized. This is the south of the country.
Boric considers that the two states of exception that are in force today deserve two different treatments. That the north, marked by clashes between residents and the massive arrival of foreigners, is more serious and needs extra support from the Army for a while longer to design a new strategy to avoid frequent clashes between residents and immigrants. The president is a supporter of the idea of ​​distributing “quotas” of immigrants, in general Venezuelans and Haitians, among the countries in the region.
The south, on the other hand, marked by a dispute over land and sovereignty between the original population, mainly the Mapuche, and non-indigenous residents, is an ancestral conflict. “I’m against a state of exception there, because it’s not a one-off problem, it’s a historical problem.” For the president, dialogue would be the main tool and it would be unnecessary to continue with the militarized area.
However, when touching land of conflict, Minister Siches suffered a threat, an intimidation. Her entourage was stopped, shots were fired into the air, and she had to be evacuated to safety.
The ultra-rightist José Antonio Kast wasted no time in the anonymity he had assumed since the election results and gloated, “that the minister is well, but that she realizes how fearful thousands of Chileans live every night in the south of parents”.
The incident was small but symbolic and left a warning sign in the air. More than just promoting dialogue, the Boric government needs to quickly put concrete alternatives on the table.
After all, who knows how long the opposition’s truce and honeymoon with supporters will last.
