Pinochet resuscitated”: an annoyed comment, released yesterday before the lost referendum of his Chilean counterpart, Gabriel Boric, by the Colombian President, Gustavo Petro.
Petro was thus reacting, without diplomacy, to the massive rejection, by the Chileans, of the new Constitution defended by his comrade from Santiago, with whom he cherishes the hope of leading a new progressive axis in Latin America.
A few minutes later, he did it again on Twitter: “Only if democratic and social forces unite will it be possible to leave behind a past that taints all of Latin America, and to open up new democratic ways. »
Two references to the ghosts of the Chilean past: the dictator Augusto Pinochet, in power from 1973 to the 1990s, and Salvador Allende, the socialist overthrown by the same Pinochet who committed suicide when the putschists arrived at the door of the Moneda Palace .
Petro’s reaction is all the more interesting in that it depicts two left-wing South American presidents elected against all odds in recent months in two of the region’s most conservative countries.
But what can these presidents do? Today is a slap in the face for the “new left” that Petro dreams of on a continental scale. No less than 62% of Chileans have just rejected an ambitious text which expressed precisely what this “left of social movements” wants in 2022.
The big protests in the fall of 2019, fueled by socio-economic anger, had given him the initiative. We then launched major reforms, unheard of in this country, one of the richest in South America… but also the most unequal.
Throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, even with democracy restored, the weight of the dictatorial past affected Chilean politics. Privatization of public services enshrined in the 1980 Constitution, privileges of the army (which has never made any real my culpa), very unequal economy, anemic public services…
In 2020 and 2021, we voted in principle for a new Constitution, elected a Constituent Assembly, drafted a version of the fundamental text. Then came the election, last December, of a young president, precisely from this movement: Gabriel Boric.
Why, today, this brutal halt? Because many people, including Boric voters in December 2021 (56% against a far-right candidate), felt that it was going too far, too fast, that it was a radical and biased text.
In Chile, the old conservative background is still there. A not insignificant fraction has a nostalgia for Pinochet. There are taxi drivers – I met some in Santiago – who growl when they pass by the statue of Salvador Allende (erected in 2000 behind the Moneda Palace).
The rejected text comprised 170 pages and no less than 388 articles: a veritable catalog of rights as reviewed, corrected and extended ad infinitum by the progressive left, it was a detailed text, punctiliously explicit, which would have made the Chilean Constitution one of the longest in the world.
It spoke of representative democracy combined with “direct democracy”, women’s rights, indigenous rights (with a state defined as “plurinational” – which shocked the right), sexual minorities, with recognition of the gender choice.
The rights of nature, the rights of animals would have been enshrined in the Constitution. The obligation to fight against climate change also, as well as the right to abortion (in a country where it remains very restricted), to free health and education (in a country where these sectors are largely privatized) .
Add to this an obligation of equal hiring in the public sector, but also in the mixed public-private sector and the right to water as a “common public good” (while water distribution is private). And we go…
This massive refusal no doubt sanctioned an overly strong ideological orientation, the ambition to “lay down the law” rather than to give general guidelines.
But there are other, more political reasons for this failure. There were some scandals in the election and conduct of the Constituent Assembly (elected in 2021), such as that of one of its leaders who, to attract votes, had invented cancer!
And then, the campaign of rechazo did not shy away from several lies and exaggerations: it was claimed that this Constitution would abolish private property, that it would make Chile a State of the Soviet or Chavista type. That the indigenous nations, armed with their new rights, were going to separate and break up the country. That abortion would be permitted up to nine months.
It will therefore be necessary to start all over again: new constituent (with undoubtedly a stronger mobilization of the right to elect it) and new wording, with the key to a more neutral and shorter text.
The political initiative, which from 2019 to 2021 was clearly that of the social movements (the political elite was lethargic and ashamed after the demonstrations of autumn 2019), could well go back to the right, with a president now weakened. And a left that must meditate on the adage: “Who kisses too badly hugs.” »
François Brousseau is an international business analyst at Ici Radio-Canada / [email protected]