Chile puts itself in the hands of independents

Up to 68% of the candidates for the 155 seats in the Chilean Constituent Assembly lacked a party label. This percentage signifies an explicit disapproval of the traditional political parties, as President Sebastián Piñera acknowledged at the end of the two-day elections - the first case in Latin American history - in which the drafters of the country's new Constitution were elected. 

In the country in the South American hemisphere that has best managed the coronavirus pandemic (49.1% of the population immunised), regional governors and mayors and councillors of the 346 communes and 345 municipalities were also elected. Of these, the most relevant fact is that the Communist Party won the Mayor's Office of Santiago. The right wing also lost other important municipalities, such as Viña del Mar, Maipú and Estación Central.

However, the most important election was that of the constituents, a process postponed because of the pandemic, and a direct consequence of the violent riots that broke out in 2019 and which put not only President Sebastián Piñera on the ropes, but also the institutional set-up of Chile, considered the most democratic and developed country in the whole of Latin America. 

The first consequence of these elections is that the conservative spectrum has suffered a severe defeat, as both Piñera and his ally, the Republican Party, which is even further to the right, do not have the 52 seats that are considered essential to negotiate with sufficient force the articles of the country's new Magna Carta. Only a hypothetical alliance with the independents, who against all odds have won 30 seats, could have a certain impact on the next fundamental text that will establish the rules of coexistence in Chile. 

A priori, it will be the left, made up of Apruebo and Apruebo Dignidad, and their more than 50 seats together, that will have the best chance of reaching agreements with at least a good part of the independents. Apruebo is actually the label that replaces the former Concertación, which governed Chile between 1990 and 2010, after the end of General Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. Apruebo Dignidad encompasses both the Communist Party and the Frente Amplio, which brings together a whole panoply of groupings from the classical left to the extreme left.

The work of the constituents will begin as early as June, with the main mission of eradicating the causes of the inequality of which the 1980 Constitution, drafted under the dictatorship, was accused, and which would have led to the outbreak of violence in 2019. 

If the abomination of the now defunct Chilean constitutional text were to be taken literally, the new one would have to reduce the power of the president of the nation, considered disproportionate by leftist sectors, and at the same time it would also have to regionalise and decentralise the power overwhelmingly based in the capital. Nor is the question of the inclusion of indigenism in the fundamental law any less important. Since independence, Chile's institutions have been engaged in a never-resolved struggle with the Mapuche people. Now, 17 of the 155 constituent seats are reserved for Chile's indigenous peoples, who are demanding their express recognition or even the establishment of a plurinational system. 

The model of economic development that the constituents will implement in Chile is no less important, and depending on what they choose, this will affect fundamental institutions such as the autonomy of the nation's Central Bank or the role of the Constitutional Court, and of course that of the social actors, whom the left intends to give a high hierarchy in the country's major economic decisions. 

It is therefore an assembly whose mission will transcend the borders of Chile itself. The experience of its model, whether it succeeds or fails, will serve as a lesson for other Latin American countries, where the problems inherent in strong inequalities, each with its own peculiarities, are quite similar.