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.
7 comments:
"And the radical left-wing movement it propelled to power is now unpopular, having discovered that governing is harder than protesting."
Quite. And in the case of the UK we did not elect the lunatic socialist wordsmiths as much as we 'dis-elected' the indolent nominally Conservative *mumblers. I hope it is not too late to learn that neither the lunatics or the indolent are worth voting for at the next General Election (whenever that may be).
*Grind with the gums; chew without teeth and with great difficulty
My goodness, AKH, you’ve really opened a can of South American worms here. Right, down to the deep reading I suppose.
Are we sure that this isn't an old Monty Python script?
“Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead”.
DJ - I hope it is not too late to learn too, but it's disappointing that millions saw Labour as a viable alternative to the indolent.
Anon - just casual browsing really, checking to see if anyone else has a government as dire as ours.
Jannie - not entirely sure because it wouldn't take much to turn it into a sketch.
dearieme - I'd forgotten who came up with that one, Claud Cockburn says Wokiepedia, but I didn't realise he died as long ago as 1981.
"As president, he has proved less radical than the movement from which he sprang."
Yes, in democracies leaders tend to be more moderate than their parties. They need to woo other sections of the electorate.
That makes Starmer even more shocking, and reminds us that Lammy, Rayner, McDonnell, Mahmoud, and Dawn Butler are his gibbering backdrop.
Sam - yes it does make Starmer even more shocking, he seems to be unaware of the wider electorate, as if the huge majority of voters who didn't vote for him don't count. Rosie Duffield's letter suggests he really is that obtuse.
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