The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

Election of constituents in Chile: the great surprise of the independents and the foreseeable defeat of the ruling party

2021-05-18T12:35:47.730Z


Some 65 of the 138 elected representatives, the other 17 are seats for indigenous peoples - they do not have political militancy and install a blanket of uncertainty that makes it unpredictable to foresee what the new Constitution will be like.


Jose Maria del Pino

05/16/2021 10:18 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • World

Updated 05/16/2021 10:18 PM

It was not in the forecasts and, if the pollsters were to go public, tomorrow their shares would surely plummet. They underestimated the new ones and believed that the electorate would be distributed as it traditionally did. But it was not like that. Some 65 of the 138 elected representatives - the other 17 are seats for indigenous peoples -

do not have political militancy and install a blanket of uncertainty

that makes it unpredictable to foresee what the new constitution of Chile will be like.

The ruling party, totally disaffected by the presidential figure of Sebastián Piñera, was

betting on obtaining 45 constituents

that would allow moderating the drafting of the new founding body of Chile.

But the results give him 39 seats, far from the sector's projections.

The former Concertación, the conglomerate that boasts successful governments and figures such as former presidents Ricardo Lagos or Michelle Bachelet,

won 25 seats and the new Chilean Broad Front obtained 28.

Officials close the polls and start counting the votes in Santiago, Chile.

Photo EFE

Where did the votes go, then?

The 63 missing seats were distributed among independents.

Citizens, some more and others less well known, who grouped themselves in lists outside the parties and turned the electoral board. If the political “DNA” of many of them is analyzed, it is likely that they could be linked to sectors of the center-left and the left. But one thing is clear: they

do not respond to the establishment or to anyone but themselves.

What seemed, then, a constitutional process where the two-thirds necessary for the agreements would guarantee moderation,

is now an open letter full of probabilities that analysts do not dare to project

.

And while these results are not complete, the trend is clear: the big losers in this election were the government and traditional political parties.

Chile will enter a constituent process with more doubts than certainties.

First, because

the right does not have veto power

, since it does not obtain the necessary third for it.

And although the opposition could claim victory, there is no control over the independents, which are also necessary to achieve two-thirds that impose their ideas.

In the Palacio de La Moneda,

the worried faces multiplied

.

But so did the faces of opposition politicians, who failed to connect with the massive discontent of the public expressed during the last year, since that already distant October 2019.

This election also took place amid the growing fear of the emergence of populist leaderships.

It is not strange, therefore, that a candidate for president like Pamela Jiles, - who rose to stardom promoting the withdrawal of pension funds to fight the pandemic, treats her adherents as "grandchildren" and dances in congress like the anime Naruto- have the first intention of presidential vote.

She also does not respond to traditional coalitions.

The great conclusion of the elections in Chile is that the gap and disaffection between citizens and the institutional order, understanding the latter as the parties and state agencies,

seems insurmountable

. Only in the elections of Governors and Mayors, where Independents competed considerably less, did electoral behavior seem to move within historical canons.

Complex days will come in the neighboring country.

The markets will assess the risks of this new scenario tomorrow, just when the country requires the confidence of the markets to begin its reactivation after the damage caused by the Pandemic.

Additionally, this week the presidential pre-candidacies are registered, where the Left must evaluate whether its dispersion is profitable for them or, on the contrary, opts for unity to confront the ruling party.

An officialism that, contrary to all predictions and even the result of this election, sees in Joaquín Lavín - mayor of Las Condes and very competitive in all polls - a real alternative to cling to power.

PB

Look also

Chile concluded a historic election for the Constituent Assembly: hard defeat of the allies of President Sebastián Piñera

Chile and the mother of all elections

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-05-18

You may like

News/Politics 2024-02-13T15:01:19.126Z
News/Politics 2024-02-27T05:16:22.312Z

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-27T16:45:54.081Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.