The need to resort to the Army to guarantee security in some parts of the country has begun to persecute the new Chilean president, Gabriel Boric, who has criticized this measure so much in the past. The climate of violence that Chile is experiencing has begun to overtake Boric and his Broad Front government with the support of the Communist Party, so that the president’s popularity has plummeted, while citizens’ fear of suffering an attack has skyrocketed. violent.
The impact of the news contributes to that climate. On his first visit to the north of the country after his inauguration on March 11, Boric himself was stoned (hit his chief of staff), while the Minister of the Interior was shot while traveling to Mapuche lands , In the south.
Last week, in just 24 hours, at two different points in the capital, the Minister of Defense suffered an armed robbery at her home (a son was attacked and her husband was handcuffed; she was not at home) and an escort of the president was attacked while driving an official car. To this is added the death of a journalist – the first death in office of an informant since the return to democracy –, who was injured by a bullet in a May Day demonstration.
Although these latest crimes have allegedly been committed by common criminals, voices on the left have insinuated that some sectors of the right may be promoting a climate of violence to undermine Boric’s presidency. As a student leader, Boric forged his leadership in the social protests whose public disorders were partly confronted by the military, by order of the previous president, the conservative Sebastián Piñera.
The truth, in any case, is that the problems for Boric do not come from suspicious sectors. The actions of Mapuche activists have forced the government to reinstate in two southern provinces the state of emergency that the left criticized Piñera so much. In addition, the collapse of Boric’s popularity is not only due to insecurity, but also to other aspects such as economic deterioration, with high inflation that has motivated trucker mobilizations and is already reaching double digits.
Already at the end of April, in his seventh week at La Moneda, Boric saw how his disapproval (53%) exceeded his approval (36%) in the polls, something that in the case of Piñera occurred in week number 37, and in the previous presidency of the social democrat Michelle Bachelet it happened in week 33. Those data from the Cadem pollster have hardly improved in their last calculation: there has been an increase of two points in favorability, but the same degree of rejection remains.
Insecurity, of course, does not help. Another recent Cadem survey indicates that 86% of Chileans believe that crime has increased in the last year, 88% think that it is more violent and 72% fear being the victim of a crime.
If the social situation gets worse while the economic situation gets complicated, the political situation seems to be headed for a dead end. The political panorama could be blocked if there is a rejection of the new Constitution in the referendum to be held on September 4. According to Cadem, 42% of those who once voted in favor of drafting a new Constitution (to replace the current one, still approved with Pinochet as president) today could have voted differently, in view of how it has developed the process: 28% say they would have voted against and 14% are undecided.
On the other hand, 46% of Chileans say that in September they will vote against the proposed text of the new Constitution, 38% say that they will approve it and 17% do not respond. The Pulso Ciudadano survey is not more optimistic: 45.6% reject the text that is being drafted, 27.1% approve it and 27.4% are undecided.
The change in attitude towards the constitutional process is due to several factors; Among them, the distrust of the Constitutional Convention stands out, which has been made up of very disparate representatives and often with maximalist approaches.
Pending the definitive text that will be submitted to a referendum – the Convention began its work in July 2021 and has just concluded a first version that must now be harmonized – what has transpired for the moment points to greater decentralization (greater power for the regions, even fiscal), less favorable conditions for investment (easier for nationalizations) and an increase in public spending (due to the recognition of new social rights). It also lowers the powers of the country’s president and the Senate and reinforces the power of ethnic minorities, in a state that declares itself multinational.
This modifies the institutional and economic parameters that have constituted the context of the development experienced by Chile in recent decades and can complicate the governance of the country.
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