the face of Gabriel Boric This Monday he could not assimilate the brutal defeat in the popular consultation that buried the Constitution drafted for a year by a joint convention. He looked emaciated. His interlocutors must have detected in the presidential countenance the figures of the electoral beating: 61.88% of Chileans voted for the ‘rejection’ and 38.12% ‘approved’, amid unprecedented turnout at the polls, 4.5 million more citizens than in December 2021.
Boric tried to maintain a certain arrogance in front of the helmsman of the Chamber of Deputies, Raúl Soto (PPD, center-left), and the president of the Senate, the socialist Álvaro Elizalde. He met with them to define how the constitutional issue is redirected by the legislature. Elizalde said that the troubled president “has asked us to develop a dialogue in the National Congress that will allow us to establish an institutional path. We hope to reach an agreement as soon as possible.”
“The only thing that matters is the best interest of Chilean men and women. We have a second chanceIt will probably be the last one,” said Soto. The Parliament, where the Government does not have decisive majorities, will convene all the parties with representation and, in addition, will listen to the social movements and representatives of civil society. But the roadmap is not so simple: the ‘rejection’, said the portal the bewildermentit is “a two-headed dragon“Strictly speaking, there are more of its components. At least five sectors attribute victory in the consultation at this time, from the hardest right headed by José Antonio Kast, to a center-left that disagreed with the way the Convention worked. No all have the same disposition to find a joint solution.The Christian Democrats called on Sunday’s winners to “commit to the new process.”
Beyond the legitimate differences, I know that the desire for dialogue and encounter prevails. We continue and move forward!
Full message on the Constitutional Plebiscite: https://t.co/Zz6VSYgUM1— Gabriel Boric Font (@gabrielboric) September 5, 2022
Moment of weakness
The result of the plebiscite has sent an additional message: society no longer wants even the remnants of the Magna Carta promulgated by the last dictatorship, in 1981, but neither did it accept the contents of the one that has just been buried in the polls. For Boric, who defended the Approval as best I can, it was a hard learning experience. At 36 years and six months after assuming the presidency, he finds himself in a situation of political weakness that was expected at one point. During the closing of the electoral campaign, the massive mobilizations in favor of the ‘yes’ aroused a timid illusion in those around him. But everything was much worse than expected by the polls. The screens, where the fake news, but also ruthless criticism of the Convention, beat the street. The feminist movement, environmental organizations, intellectuals and academics are the others defeated in the plebiscite. With this scenario, the president received on Monday the forces that make up the coalition of the leftist government. A change is expected in the team that has been accompanying the president.
Related news
It is not ruled out that Boric will initiate, either by survival or by understanding the new coordinates, a road to political moderation. “Chilean men and women have demanded a new opportunity to meet and we must live up to this call,” she said on Sunday night. The task ahead does not need “maximalists.” Everyone understood the allusion to the most radicalized sectors that the Assembly had.
Crime is the first urgency of Chileans.
President Gabriel Boric, when do they begin to govern? pic.twitter.com/VUP9RqHdOI
– José Antonio Kast Rist ?? (@joseantoniokast) September 5, 2022
the past and the future
The social outbreak of November 19, 2019 had put his predecessor in serious trouble, Sebastian Pinera. The magnitude of the protest scared the economic elite. The crisis was channeled under the promise of a new Magna Carta. Their progressive content did not manage to summon part of the citizens who three years ago took to the streets to demand the end of the neoliberal era for multiple reasons: many seemed to feel that the convoluted language of the conventionalists, their cumbersome quotations from unknown authors, was not challenging them . Analysts wondered on Sunday night if Chile has returned to November 18, 2019, a day before the so-called “blowout”, or if a third way is truly opening between the crisis management modes of that time and the fundamental text that failed the test at the polls. The ultra Kast has already exhibited its specifications on Twitter: “crime is the first urgency of Chileans. President Gabriel Boric ¿When do they start ruling??”.