On December 14, the ruling party was decisively defeated in the elections in a new demonstration of exemplary citizenship that makes us proud and stands out in this fateful continent. There is a wide repertoire on the causes that explain the historical disaster of the left in Chile, and on this basis, in accordance with certain circulating hypotheses, I distinguish at least six critical factors that contribute to understanding the extent of the defeat. The first, and perhaps most important, factor was setting the wrong priorities for government management. While a significant part of citizens have ordered their lives around insecurity, that is, with fear as the organizer of daily life, the ruling party has responded with structural diagnoses, tables, plans, comprehensive approaches and the tone of a teacher who corrects, and not a state that protects its citizens.
The second factor, as important as the previous one, was, I believe, the inflationary promise of citizens’ expectations which resulted in the great frustration caused by the rejection of constitutional change. The cycle opened in the overflow of social protest of October 18, 2019 had installed an expectation of refoundation transformed into a sort of civil religion, where the idea was that it was enough to want to change, that the State was a docile tool and that the obstacles were only residues of the past. The survey data clearly showed how the tendency toward rejection has grown, while those responsible for drafting the Constitution have turned the task into a shoddy circus act. At the same time, the government administration lived in a permanent mission of infinite complexity on all fronts, with large doses of chaos and disorder; with a fragmented Congress, with slow-moving bureaucracies, like-minded coalitions that seemed to love each other in public and hate each other in private, old feuds and great awkwardness. So the ruling party specialized in explaining why it couldn’t do it, until voters decided to judge someone who at least promised yes, if only on a symbolic level.
A third factor could be called the aesthetic of contempt, easy to recognize in this involuntary pedagogy of moral superiority which defines the good country in relation to the bad country; the enlightened against the backward; sensitive faces against the poor. This aesthetic of contempt also has a perverse effect, since it locks the ruling party in its own bubble. The sector, surrounded by flatterers, pats itself on the back, convinced of its regal attributes, no longer perceives the multiple and obvious signs of wear which are eating away at its foundations. A fourth factor, more psychosocial in nature, was poor anxiety management. Chile has become a worried country; anxiety in the face of insecurity, precarious employment, migration perceived as uncontrollable; anxiety also in the face of money that is not enough and the uncertainty of the future. The ruling party has attempted to manage this emotional state with therapeutic language, a set of containment, care, focus and process. An impeccable methodology for a seminar on equity, but ineffective for a society in a state of alert. The fifth factor was cleavage disorientation. For years, Chilean politics has been organized around the axis of dictatorship versus democracy, a powerful, identitarian and morally clear story. But this axis was exhausted in its capacity to decide the elections. Not because people don’t care about history, but because there are now other priorities and greater pragmatism.
The sixth factor was the underestimation of the weight of compulsory voting. It has been demonstrated empirically that when those who always vote vote, the conversation is more ideological; and when those who don’t always vote vote, the conversation becomes more practical, more concrete, more impatient. Thus, compulsory voting has reintroduced the non-militant voter, the one who does not read the programs, the one who decides by impression, by experience and by common sense. In any case, the medium-term prospects seem less epic than the apocalyptics believe and less calm than the triumphalists imagine. We’ll see. From March 11, the new government will face a conditional mandate; a policy that requires security and control, but with visible and short-term results. Otherwise, the Chilean pendulum, the one that has been swinging lately with the delicacy of a demolition, could swing again with devastating power.
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