A wonderful and heartwarming election to the presidency of Chile of the radical left candidate Gabriel Boric. At the end of 2021 in the form of the end of the pandemic world, the Chileans, them, walked Sunday against the climate of general depression. Let us not forbid ourselves to speak of “revolution” – by the street and by the ballot box. Gabriel Boric, former student leader, young at his 35, not only won the presidency in the second round of the election, he won it decisively (56% against 44%) against his opponent of extreme right, José Antonio Kast, devotee of Augusto Pinochet and Jair Bolsonaro. And what is more, against the backdrop of a substantial participation rate (55%, a record for Chile). The polls heralded a neck-and-neck battle between these two extremes; they got it all wrong. Mr. Boric’s victory is meaningful in that it reflects in society the will from all points of view of a clear break with the legacy of the dictatorship.
We do not yet know what this major shift will be done in concrete terms, if the new president will succeed in translating it into lasting policies of social justice or if it will be summed up by ephemerality to a popular rant, as too often happens. In a world stuck in its populism, it is an election that makes you dream – and that will make a certain Gabriel Québécois dream. There is no question here of sulking his pleasure in seeing the populist and ultraconservative right which is rampant throughout Latin America bite the dust in Chile. But where and how will the new government find the fiscal and political means for its ambitions?
“Do not be afraid of the youth to change this country. […] If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its tomb, ”Boric said in the campaign. They are high, the expectations of urban youth, who mobilized in its favor and without whom it would not be there. However, the more difficult the president’s room for maneuver will be, the more difficult it will be to dig. He promotes the welfare state in health, education and pensions, but he will face a parliament divided down the middle between left and right. And if Mr. Kast was quick to concede victory on Sunday, which is to his credit, it goes without saying that the caste which still pulls the strings of a hyperprivatized Chilean economy will not leave without saying anything the new president dismantle the structure of privilege and inequality scaffolded by the Chicago Boys.
We would like to see what is happening in Chile happen in Brazil, where the left, failing to renew itself, remains a prisoner of the tutelary figure of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Gabriel Boric is a new generation of committed thirties who did not experience the dictatorship that ended in 1990, or barely, and even less the overthrow in 1973 of Salvador Allende, for which we can not help today to have a thought. The point is that they are progressive economically and environmentally, but also on societal issues, such as abortion rights and gender equality, a consistency that much of the left lacks. Latin American. Their progressivism is due to something else still, and very important: the fact that they are breaking with a traditional disconnected left, the one which, in the name of the “democratic transition”, has spared the goat and the cabbage for 30 years without questioning the established neoliberal order, if only through superficial indentations.
What does a transition mean that changes nothing fundamentally? Sunday’s upheaval did not fall from the sky. This question, many Chileans have been asking for at least 10 years. From the major demonstrations of winter 2011 against student debt to the historic movement of 2019 against inequalities, this young new democratic left has patiently consolidated its presence in Parliament – as well as at the municipal level, now controlling town halls of Valparaíso and Santiago. It was then from the 2019 movement that came the demand to repeal the Constitution imposed under the dictatorship, a demand which was approved by referendum up to 78% before giving rise to the election of a Constituent Assembly. largely from civil society, responsible for drafting a new Magna Carta by the summer of 2022. With others, Gabriel Boric has carried all these debates, from the street to the ballot box.
It is now up to him to form a government of the broad coalition united around his candidacy – a Frente amplio which ranges from the Communist Party to various center-left movements. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He will always be able to seek advice from former presidents Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet, who have given him their support. Chile is turning into a laboratory of direct democracy which deserves the greatest attention.