The honeymoon of the Chileans with the young man did not last long socialist president Gabriel Boric. Elected a year ago with the highest consensus in the history of the South American country (4,6 million votes), the former leader of the 2011 student revolts is now an increasingly lame duck. With 56% approval in last year's presidential elections, when he defeated the Pinochetist candidate Jose Antonio Cast, Boric had launched the Constituent Assembly to finally give Chile a new Charter, but the project was rejected by the voters. And now in the new constituent recently voted, the leader's party, Unidad para Chile, is in the minority: 23 of the 51 seats are in fact assigned to the Republican Party, an ultra-right party, another 11 to the center-right formation, and only 16 to the governing left (plus 1 to indigenous representatives).
New Constituent Assembly for Chile: clear victory for the right, defeat for Boric
La right as a whole he therefore obtained the 62% of preferences, in an electoral session which was compulsory and in which 85% of those entitled took part (even if 17% voted blank). It is clear that now Boric will have to come to terms at least with the moderate right and that therefore his project for a new constitution, which was quite radical, can be said to be definitively over. In fact, last September the 37-year-old president submitted an ambitious text to his fellow citizens, in order to definitively leave behind the experience of the dictatorship, of which the current Charter is still the daughter: the right to abortion was contemplated, as well as a new public social security system, based on the contributions of workers and businesses (and no longer, as now, left to private initiative), and a new model of plurinational state, that is, one that recognizes indigenous minorities, as Bolivia and Ecuador have done.
Consent to the minimum for the president of the left
By virtue of this, there was also provision for a quota of indigenous representatives in Parliament, as well as an equal distribution according to gender. However, the project was overwhelmed by the fake news spread on social media, and soundly rejected. And today the consensus rate of Boric, according to the latest surveys, is just 28%, while at the beginning of the mandate it was 50% and the polls showed the new Constitution as approved. The socialist president also pays for the collapse of the citizens' sense of security: although the crime in the country has not increased, the "fear index" is at its highest since 2000 and a recent research by Ipsos, which took into consideration 25 countries in all areas of the world, decreed the Chilean population as the population most concerned by violence ( 60%).
What happens now?
In an increasingly polarized scenario (the center has practically disappeared in Chile too, and the right-wingers are catching their breath in South America, as demonstrated by the recent victory in Paraguay), Boric has nothing to do but accept a mediation with the more moderate part of the right, proposing a new text that is shorter but has a better chance of passing the referendum. An example of the possible compromise are the civil rights andabortion. Boric managed to pass, as a simple law outside the Constitution, same-sex marriage, and also on abortion (to date only Uruguay, in all of Latin America, fully recognizes it) there would be glimmers, given that according to polls more than half of the population would be in favor. The priority, however, remains that of creating a moderate front capable of neutralizing the ambitions of the extreme right, which would gladly bring the new Constitution back to the one in force under Pinochet. That is 50 years back. How it will end, we will know in December.
