It is becoming urgent to reach an agreement to put the constitutional process back on track and unblock this paralysis that only feeds demagogies and polarizing populisms. If this agreement is reached, although it may sound curious, we could see politicians doing politics (and not polling), the government governing and legislators legislating. This is the minimum that workers, who continue to work, and Chilean families, who continue to stoically endure insecurity and economic difficulties, deserve.
The scenario shows lights and shadows. On the one hand, a transversal group of representatives of eight parties are making an effort to reach a constitutional agreement, keeping their word and trying to avoid the serious mistakes they made in the failed convention. On the other hand, there are loud voices proposing that the Congress should be the one to resolve the constitutional issue or that it should be decided by the citizens in a plebiscite from the outset. But this is not convenient for anyone, first, because of the electoral fatigue shown by the citizenship; then, because it would disintegrate the valuable unity in diversity that meant the 62% of the rejection; and above all, because it would demonstrate once again that our political system is not capable of leading, but is limited to a mere spokesmanship that could well be replaced by a software.
The government, meanwhile, lives its parallel reality. As if stunned by a defeat it never assumed, it returns to its niche debates, first free abortion and then euthanasia. In social emergencies, he is unable to resolve his complexes to propose a decisive and credible security agenda. On the constitutional issue, he steps aside, shirking responsibilities, comfortable with the possibility of diluting his defeat in a failure of the whole political system, if the agreement never comes. This is demonstrated by Senator Latorre (RD) and Minister Orellana, blaming others for the delay of a constitutional agreement and showing that neither 4-S, nor inflation, nor the security crisis, nor anything else will make them give up their sacrosanct agenda.
In spite of everything, there is hope. Far from the government's attitude, the transversal table continues working. Different groups of politicians and intellectuals are proposing alternative mechanisms and designs. It is to be hoped that the agreement arrives in time, before the demagogues have spread too much and their bravado encourages the path of revenge and polarization, the same path that has been avoided, with courage and for the good of Chile, by those who work silently on the expected agreement.
Column by Juan de Dios Valdivieso, Regional Director of IdeaPaís in O'Higgins, published by El Tipógrafo in the October 27, 2022 edition.