Plebiscite: the left has forgotten that Chile is a moderate country

The left, prey to its identitarianism, got drunk on the social explosion and forgot that Chile, after all it is a moderate country.

This process cannot be explained without pointing it out 80% of Chileans want, and long for, a new Constitution. Nor can it be denied that the vast majority of the country has agreed on a common diagnosis: the economic and social development achieved must be territorially democratized and transferred to the various social strata.

The Chilean left, led by Gabriel Boric, faced the largest window of opportunity in its history. Never before has such a clear option to generate a transformation project in the country which lays its foundations in a constitutional text, with all the symbolism implicit in the extinction of the constitution of the dictator Augusto Pinochet.

However, as he wrote the history of Latin America in repeated chapters of his almanac, the left once again tried their projects, this time in Chile. She fell prey to her own identity. 80% of the entry plebiscite got them so drunk that the slogans of the social epidemic of October 2019, such as better health or education, gave way to plurinationality, territorial autonomy, the elimination of the Senate and intervention in the judicial system.

Relief

In a flash transformed a constitutional text into a government program. With this they began to weaken the abysmal majority reached only a few months earlier.

There were few celebrations in Chile on Sunday evening. The vast and historic majority were silent. The Chileans did not embrace, but breathed a sigh of relief. In the main cities there were few “horns” and there were no scenes in the heart of the city.

It is what promised to be a process of encounter and “common home”, ended up turning into a real trench warfarefull of violence to those who thought differently.

Without wanting it or wanting it, the left has built a communication framework of moral superiority. She served him with a portion of the youth, but eventually turned against him. Forcing all those who thought differently to silence, he forgot to listen.

Because those who thought differently have stopped expressing their opinion. And so, both the Constitutional Convention and Gabriel Boric’s government fell apart a microclimate of complacency and obtuse conviction.

votes everywhere

The rejection obtained, at the end of the day, the same number of votes as all the participants in the presidential elections of 2021 as a whole. The refusal got more votes than the entire universe of voters who voted for the entry plebiscite.

There is no other electoral option in history with a greater number of votes. The silent majority did not have electoral demonstrations or mass events. It was not mobilized on the streets, but in homes. He didn’t go out shouting, he preferred to give him his opinion on whatsapp.

A separate note is also the strong and categorical message against political violence, a residual legacy of the marginality of the social protest of the outbreak. And there the Left of the Broad Front will have the opportunity to definitively dissociate itself from them and understand that their own governance lies in the construction of a large majority that looks to the center.

It is that this Sunday a part of the center-left coordinator -tired of ignoring the success of their governments in the last thirty years- she too breathed a sigh of relief. He felt that the town was recovering its lost memory, the one in which the surnames of Aylwin and Lagos Escobar resound today.

It is symbolic that, at the same time as the right came out in front of the press microphones, it did the same in another place in the capital. Both to thank the support for the triumphant option, the one in which circumstantially they had to team up with who in other times was the rival.

At the end of the day, Chile shows once again that it is a moderate country. Who yearns for changes, but not dramatic ones. Who wants a better future, but without allowing a sector of society to perpetuate an ideological triumph over the rest of the population through a Constitution, as did the military dictatorship.

The silent majority has given the left and its identity beliefs a balm of humility, an invitation to mature.