Chile: The future of its political right

 


Chile is focused on the municipal elections that will take place after the summer holidays in the south. What is still worrying is the uncertainty, and the right wing is exploiting it very well. In the polls, its figures that will go to the primaries have as a priority to maintain a rank of institutionality that can catapult it as an option, even in its most radical wing like Kaiser.

Johannes Kaiser, former deputy of the Republican Party, from the rightest wing of Kast and his party can hurt the Republican option by taking votes in the first round, but that can be neutralized, once the wounds have healed, in the second round. Kaiser, hand in hand with his brother Axel, is looking for alliances in the so-called libertarian right and the support of Milei, but it will not be easy for him. His potential vote is estimated to be 5%.

Kaiser takes advantage of José Antonio Kast's bad moment after the December plebiscite together with the death of former President Piñera, but Kast has other competitors on the right and yet Kaiser does not want to be an outsider. He wants to compete in the Chile Vamos primaries. Nothing anti-caste or similar things. He goes within the institutional. In other words, he seeks to position himself as a competitor, not as a divider. This is good for the right wing because in case the competition is clean at the end of the day, whether it is Kast, Kaiser or Mathei, the right wing will be as unified as possible.

The right wing also wants to stabilize the auxiliary figures of Piñerismo after his death. These figures, such as former ministers and collaborators, would be catapulted into the municipal elections. At the same time, the left is undergoing a strong attrition. The security issue, and now the scandal of the retired Venezuelan opposition lieutenant who was kidnapped and executed by a vigilante group, is causing a lot of noise.

The consequences of events of this type, as well as Boric's difficulty in reducing the impact of insecurity, which is more perceived than real compared to the region, are gasoline for the right wing and is what can lead the left coalition to a potential electoral disaster.

What will happen?

A general feeling in the left (the Apruebo Dignidad-Frente Amplio coalition and the Communist Party) that the government needs to defend its ideas with more strength and resume the agenda of ambitious transformations that it had when it came to power in March 2022. They have nothing more in their repertoire and Boric is trying to vary it by reaching agreements with the coalition or at least with part of it.

The idea is to mobilize his more radical bases so that they do not become disillusioned in the local elections. Although Boric has a 30% approval rating, this level is not enough to win elections, so the coalition candidates want to keep him away, although the problem has more to do with the fact that the discourse of refoundation has lost momentum in the face of a discourse oriented towards solving concrete problems. This has more strength in the municipal bases than in the national ones. That is why the radicals of the left may not read the moment well.

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