Not even the best forecasts predicted such comfortable results for the Chilean extreme right in the elections for constitutional councilors held this Sunday: the Republican Party, which advocates maintaining the current Constitution, obtained 22 seats of the 50 at stake (99 percent counted)becoming the party with the most votes at the national level and doubling the traditional right in seats.
(In context: Defeat for Boric in Chile: right will lead the drafting of the new Constitution)
“Today we can breathe a little easier,” said their leader, Jose Antonio Kast, who lost to the president gabriel boric in the 2021 presidential elections and is a staunch defender of the neoliberal model established by the military dictatorship (1973-1990).
With 35.4 percent of the vote, it swept most of Chile’s 16 regions, its traditional strongholds in the south, in the north, and even seized fiefdoms ruled by the left like the Valparaíso Region.
(Also read: What is the Republican Party, the one that won constituent elections in Chile?)
In this scenario, it is most probable that the Constitution that emerges from this process will not be an enabling Constitution.
These 22 seats will allow the extreme right exercise the power of veto in the constitutional body: “In this scenario, it is most likely that the Constitution that emerges from this process will not be an enabling Constitution. It is a guarantee of the status quo and the strengthening of the presidential options of the Republicans”, the director of the Faculty of Government of the University of Chile, Claudia Heiss, told the Efe news agency.
On the other hand, the leftist contenders obtained 17 seats, while one seat is reserved for a representative of the original peoples. This result represents a substantial political change in that country as it turns to the right, approximately three years after civil protests paralyzed much of the territory amid demands for greater equality and better social services.
(Keep reading: Chile: right wing sweeps constituent elections and gets veto power)
But what does the triumph of the right imply and what is coming for the constituent process? And how is President Boric after these results? Here we explain.
That changes?
The Republicans repeated the surprised which they already gave in the 2021 elections, when they won the first presidential round and obtained 16 parliamentarians in the legislatures (15 deputies and one senator, although three of them left the party). However, now for the first time, they will lead the body in charge of discussing and approving a new Constitution.
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“There is a distribution of power that is different from what we thought and that changes everything: the constitutional debate will change because the issues that are included in the Constitution and that will be important for the Government will depend on the Republican Party,” he told Efe analyst Kenneth Bunker, from the Tech Global think tank.
There is a distribution of power that is different from what we thought and that changes everything: the constitutional debate is going to change.
For Buker, in addition, “the Government is in a very bad footing, it is a very bad vote that has to do with Boric’s mismanagement and his ability to take charge of people’s current problems.”
Kast’s overwhelming triumph completely changes the balance of forces of the new Constitutional Council Faced with the previous Convention, dominated by progressivism and a majority of independent candidates who, unlike today’s elections, were able to run on their own lists.
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For the deputy director of the Institute for Society Studies, Rodrigo Pérez, one of the keys will be if the extreme rightists “choose to accentuate their most vociferous side or if they establish a policy to seek allies”points out.
During the campaign, the Republicans lashed out strongly against the rest of the opposition, although in recent days, Kast -who left the traditional right-wing coalition in which he had been a member for more than 20 years, considering it too moderate- gave signs of wanting to bet on a style more dialogue.
Claudia Heiss, from the University of Chile, qualified the result of a “republican tsunami” and assured that Kast “comes out very strengthened” ahead of the 2025 presidential elections. “We have always wanted the best for Chile, that is why we never wanted a constitutional process,” stressed Luis Silva, one of his most voted councillors.
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The dilemma of the traditional right
After the rejection of the first constitutional proposal in September and unlike the extreme right, the traditional right opted from the beginning to resume the constituent itinerary. Now, according to analysts, the conservative Chile Seguro coalition is weakened and at the crossroads of taking the extreme positions of the Republicans or adopting a more moderate profile of its own.
That traditional right, integrated into the Chile Vamos coalition (UDI, Renovación Nacional and Evópoli), suffered the worst of its nightmares: the defeat of the extreme right, which already happened for the first time in the last presidential elections.
The deputy of the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Juan Antonio Coloma, the main formation of the bloc, admitted that it was a “opposition win” led by the Republicans: “We are not going to make the mistakes of the left in the previous process,” he claimed.
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For Rodrigo Pérez, “the leaders of the traditional right are not achieving a project that appeals to large majorities and they face a complicated mix: building an identity with which they connect with voters and understanding that moderation alone is not enough for be a political project.
The political scientist from the Alberto Hurtado University, Federica Sánchez, for her part, qualified the Republican victory and maintained that, while the far right has gained veto power in the constitutional council, the leader of the opposition in congress remains the traditional right.
And it is that, with 21 percent of the votes and 11 advisers, the conservatives now have to choose between “joining with the most intransigent extreme right or putting up a barrier and staying in the center,” he told Sánchez. If they decide to get closer to the Republicans, both forces will exceed three fifths of the constitutional council and will be able to approve the regulations without having to agree with the left, which dominated the previous process and is now weakened.
Boric asks not to make “the same mistake”
Boric was very involved in the past process and campaigned in favor of the first constitutional proposal, which was finally rejected in a referendum in September.
This time, He has hardly interfered in an attempt to prevent the vote from becoming a referendum on his management and that the parties that support him in power accuse his low approval.
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He achieved it by halves: the official list (Broad Front, Communist Party and Socialist Party) came in second place, with 28.5 percent of the votes and 17 seats, but the center-left list (with which the Party for Democracy, which is also part of the Government, dropped out to join the Christian Democracy) failed to enter the council due to its low vote.
“The previous process failed because we did not know how to listen to each other among those who thought differently. I invite the Republican Party not to make the same mistake that we did,” Boric urged on a national chain. “When the pendulum of history swings from one extreme to the other incessantly, in short times, it is always the most vulnerable people who suffer from the confrontation between the elites,” he added.
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The ruling party prevailed in Atacama (north) and Coquimbo (central-north) and retained its great stronghold: Santiago. For Kenneth Bunker, from the pollster TresQuintos, if the government “manages defeat correctly, it can get something positive out of it”: “The victory of the Republicans will allow the government to have a target, a more direct antagonist than today,” he explained.
For analysts, Sunday’s election served as a stark reality check for Boric’s left-wing government as it seeks to revive its agenda, including plans to raise taxes on the rich, raise pensions and strengthen public services. .
The results may upset many on the left who demanded a new constitution to quell the social uprising at the end of 2019, exacerbating the country’s political divisions. That drive for change led to Boric’s rise from student leader to head of state.
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A global phenomenon?
The phenomenon of the Republican Party in Chile is not equivalent to other far-right phenomena in the world, according to Bunker, and -according to him- it corresponds more to a “dispute of factions” of the Chilean right that compete for hegemony in space.
However, for the political scientist from the University of Chile Octavio Avendaño, there are similarities between the Chilean extreme right and their counterparts in other countries, especially in relation to issues related to insecurity and the migratory crisis, although with elements of the country itself.
“The Republican Party also drinks from the consequences of the social outbreak and the prolonged economic crisis that generates uncertainty and a feeling of discomfort in a citizenry that is increasingly appealing for order and stability,” Avedaño concluded.
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Which are the next steps?
The 50 councilors elected this Sunday will take possession of their seats on June 7 and will have five months to prepare the proposal for a new Constitution, which will be submitted to a plebiscite on December 17.
The councilors, however, will not have carte blanche to draft the text at will, but will have to use a draft that 24 experts appointed by Parliament have been drafting since March and that they will deliver in a month.
The text also has to comply with 12 basic principles agreed upon a priori by the parties to avoid a re-founding proposal like the previous one, among which are the declaration of Chile as a “social and democratic State of law”, the indivisibility of the “Chilean nation” or the bicameral system.
This is precisely the great novelty of this process and the reason why many consider that it is “supervised” by the parties and that it is “less democratic.”
WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME*With information from Efe
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