MercoPress has an interesting piece on political jostling for the 2025 elections in Chile.
The woman who will lead Chile’s counter-revolution, according to The Economist
The graffiti are still visible. Walls shout: “Death to the police!” Bus shelters demand: “No more private pensions!” Yet the occasionally violent social upheaval that rocked Chile from 2019 to 2022 is past. And the radical left-wing movement it propelled to power is now unpopular, having discovered that governing is harder than protesting.
Chileans are fed up with extremism and yearn for moderation and common sense, argues Evelyn Matthei, the mayor of Providencia, a posh part of Santiago, the capital.
Polls suggest that in the election next year, voters will replace Gabriel Boric, a leftist firebrand who cannot seek re-election, with a bastion of the right. Many expected that to be José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative who scooped up 44% of the vote when he came second to Mr Boric last time. Instead the more centrist Ms Matthei has emerged as the front-runner.
The graffiti are still visible. Walls shout: “Death to the police!” Bus shelters demand: “No more private pensions!” Yet the occasionally violent social upheaval that rocked Chile from 2019 to 2022 is past. And the radical left-wing movement it propelled to power is now unpopular, having discovered that governing is harder than protesting.
Chileans are fed up with extremism and yearn for moderation and common sense, argues Evelyn Matthei, the mayor of Providencia, a posh part of Santiago, the capital.
Polls suggest that in the election next year, voters will replace Gabriel Boric, a leftist firebrand who cannot seek re-election, with a bastion of the right. Many expected that to be José Antonio Kast, an ultraconservative who scooped up 44% of the vote when he came second to Mr Boric last time. Instead the more centrist Ms Matthei has emerged as the front-runner.
The whole piece is well worth reading, even for those whose knowledge of Chilean politics is as lamentably threadbare as mine. It's a Chilean version of the current global political malaise - pragmatic sanity versus the lunacy of socialist wordsmiths. Here in the UK we've just elected the lunatic socialist wordsmiths - aren't we the clever ones?
The contrast between Mr Boric and Ms Matthei is striking. He sports ornate tattoos and made his name as a student leader. He was elected in 2021, at only 35, following large protests against inequality. As president, he has proved less radical than the movement from which he sprang. And he deserves credit for his full-throated condemnation of the electoral fraud in Venezuela, a test most leftists in the region have failed. But he backed a utopian and barely intelligible draft constitution, which would have defined Chile as a “pluri-national, inter-cultural, regional and ecological” state, banned for-profit universities and granted rights to nature. Voters roundly rejected the draft in 2022, and shot down another effort from hard line conservatives.
The contrast between Mr Boric and Ms Matthei is striking. He sports ornate tattoos and made his name as a student leader. He was elected in 2021, at only 35, following large protests against inequality. As president, he has proved less radical than the movement from which he sprang. And he deserves credit for his full-throated condemnation of the electoral fraud in Venezuela, a test most leftists in the region have failed. But he backed a utopian and barely intelligible draft constitution, which would have defined Chile as a “pluri-national, inter-cultural, regional and ecological” state, banned for-profit universities and granted rights to nature. Voters roundly rejected the draft in 2022, and shot down another effort from hard line conservatives.
No comments:
Post a Comment