Chile: what the left puts at stake

This Sunday's election is a new test for the field of the left in Chile, especially for those sectors that are part of the ruling party.

Although the characteristics of these elections make it necessary to look at the polls with caution, everything indicates that the opposition forces will obtain a victory that could be comfortable enough to allow them to write the new Constitution without the left and progressivism even having veto power.

Everything also indicates that the Republican Party will experience a significant advance, which could even surpass the traditional right.

If these forecasts come true, paradoxes of history, who for decades denied the possibility of a constitutional change and who today represent the main threat to democracy,

Certainly, it is not the best scenario for the ruling party, which has achieved such significant achievements as the approval of 40 hours and the increase in the minimum wage.

He arrives at this election still hit by the defeat in the plebiscite last September and by the additional difficulties imposed by the sharp inflationary picture and the public security crisis, with low levels of approval in the polls and divided into two lists.

However, and beyond the unfavorable results that are expected, the world of the left and center-left has a lot at stake in this contest.

In the first place, the possibility of demonstrating that it maintains a significant part of its support bases.

Although today's election is not a plebiscite for the government, as sectors of the right have cleverly installed, it cannot be denied that any electoral measurement is, for the forces in power, an index of their approval.

This election will show whether the social sectors that gave Gabriel Boric a resounding victory in the presidential runoff and that coincide almost exactly with the 38% that voted to approve the text proposed in the plebiscite on September 4, continue to maintain their support.

They will measure their strength, despite the disappointments that issues such as the approval of the TPP11 have caused in this world,

On the other hand, the results of this Sunday in Chile will also offer the formations that make up the government alliance a chance to measure their support in terms of citizen adhesion.

This is particularly important for Apruebo Dignidad, the coalition that makes up the Broad Front and the Communist Party, which in recent electoral contests has obtained considerably better results than its partners grouped in Democratic Socialism.

If today's election yields a favorable result for Approve Dignity, this conglomerate will have the chance to resume leadership and disrupt the operation that the traditional press and the right have been developing since Boric arrived at La Moneda: install the thesis of the two

, which extremes the legitimate differences between the coalitions that make up the government alliance, to present Appruebo Dignidad as a ballast that the president should get rid of, as if a future political alliance could be considered with the exclusion of the Broad Front and the Communist Party .

What the new Chilean left is basically playing in this election is to maintain and strengthen its articulating role.

I approve of Dignity promoted the broadest unity of the left and progressivism in the awareness that it was the most efficient from the electoral point of view.

But, also, because it is thought that to face the country's problems, among which the advance of the extreme right is one of the main ones, the articulation of a broad alliance is required.

The favorable response of the Socialist Party to this call for unity drew what could be the new axis of a confluence of political forces that, although they have differences that have been openly expressed,

Today's election must be situated within the social and political crisis that erupted in October 2019, a crisis that is an expression of the exhaustion of the development model and the sharpening of the contradictions and discomforts that it engenders, and that still has not found its path of resolution in politics.

What is at stake then is the formation of a democratic force that brings together the left and progressivism and that has the capacity to move the country forward, to lead a new cycle of growth, to lay the foundations of a social State and give a coherent meaning to the Chile of the next 30 years.

If that does not happen, the leadership of the country will be taken by the right, probably dominated by the Republicans.

Putting things like this, it is appreciated how much is at stake in this Sunday's election.

Pierina Ferretti

is the executive director of the Nodo XXI Foundation.