Chile in turbopolitics

The world looks with great surprise at the results of the exit referendum, the Chilean constitutional plebiscite of September 4, which led to an overwhelming defeat of the constitutional proposal (61.9% compared to 38.1%).

The unprecedented turnout (87%) was fueled by the launch of the compulsory vote that could not continue.

Notable defeat, in all the regions of Chile, all without exception, and an overwhelming, but numerically insignificant, triumph of the Approval abroad.

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Single-causal explanations are already

in the country, and abroad the rejection of the referendum as a decision-making mechanism that, again, as in Brexit or the Plebiscite for Peace, both in 2016, would show that "the people are not prepared and wrong.

In politics almost nothing is so simple.

But to begin with, does anyone who defends democracy think of not calling more conventional elections because those of recent years have given power to Viktor Orbán, Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump?

No. Let's go back to Chile, where although more data is required to have a more complete picture of what happened, it is possible to at least separate the wheat from the chaff.

It is said that this result is a consequence of the strong manipulation of some mass media run to the defense of the

, which derives from compulsory voting, which is explained by the drop in popularity of the Government that would have promoted it (and in this sense would account for the absence of support from parties with greater roots) or simply that it derives from the fact that the constitutional proposal it was bad

Any of these dimensions admits a discussion but it is insufficient to understand the apparent shift of the electorate that last December catapulted the Government to the Approve Dignity coalition.

First, the media with the largest audience were highly critical of the constitutional process and its results.

However, these media were also there when Gabriel Boric won in the second round, and they looked at him with similar mistrust.

Thus, although media coverage has an impact, by far it is not monolithic, in Chile there is freedom of expression and the position of the Government itself places it as a weighty enunciator, with great visibility.

It is a fact: the campaign for approval did not convince.

The immediate and very negative effect of some scandals that accompanied the constitutional drafting process and that were magnified by media dynamics in which attracting attention is a primary objective (a pernicious trend throughout the Western world) should not be left aside. .

Second, it is alleged that the defeat results from compulsory voting.

The disenchanted would be anti-system.

This is not supported empirically because the incumbent government came to La Moneda because it achieved greater mobilization (which rose from 47% to 56% and allowed Boric to go from his initial 26% of votes to 56%).

The vote for Rejection is diverse and there is no evidence that it can be attributed as a block to the right, much less to an anti-system vote.

A large group of those who rejected did so within the framework of a campaign in which many institutional actors opted to reject in order to start a new constitutional process.

That will be the main dispute of the days to come,

A third argument attributes the triumph of rejection to the absence of the parties.

The Convention characterized by new voices and a large number of independents would have proven not to work.

However, this was, never better said, a vote of rejection.

The parties that were most clearly involved in the campaign expressed their support for the Approval.

The Rejection was channeled into a smear campaign that was often confusing when not directly based on false information (

).

It is not clear that the rejection of the independents correlates with a return of the traditional parties.

A fourth argument asserts that the Constitution is simply bad and the people voted conscientiously.

We know that intermediaries have a lot of weight, be they parties, social leaders or media figures.

The constitutional proposal — numerous prestigious international analysts have said so — represents great progress, has some potholes and did not question the tendency to deepen democracy.

The attention paid to some elements such as plurinationality, in the context of a conflict with sectors of the Mapuche people that has led to violence in recent years;

or the proposal of a parity democracy in the scene of the incipient Latin American conservatism, fueled the rejection.

Other keys to consider more carefully: expectations were very high and the process was followed with a magnifying glass,

was about.

The Convention made many mistakes and paradoxically expressed and widened its distance from the electorate it sought to represent.

Now what?

The president had anticipated this probable defeat, although surely not even in his worst scenarios did he imagine its dimensions.

He has summoned all the political forces to an agreement to give continuity to the process of change.

At stake is the constitutional dispute.

The heterogeneous opposition also has in its hands to contribute to sustain governance.

The new parties emerge from the window of opportunity opened by the crisis of representation, but the turbopolitics that catapults them onto the electoral stage can also drag them down.

It would not be good for Chile.

Yanina Welp

is a Research Associate at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy, Graduate Institute of Geneva, and a contributor to Agenda Pública.

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