Once the results of the presidential elections are known, and with the new Congress already outlined, Carmen Le Foulon (Santiago, 49 years old) is invited to examine the scene left by the first elections of this type with compulsory voting and automatic registration in the electoral lists. And above all the most striking result: the third place of the economist Franco Parisi, after Jeannette Jara and José Antonio Kast.
“I think we were all a little surprised by Parisi’s strength, especially in the southern regions of Chile. In the north he has always done well”, adds professor of the University’s School of Government Adolfo Ibáñez. “But now he has risen by almost eight points in Araucanía. He is addressing a less ideological percentage of voters with a very clear, very concrete message that did not have this ‘neither facho nor comunacho’, which was his nucleusand very strong against immigration and in favor of security”.
Ask. Now the question of 2021 returns: where do Parisi’s votes go? And there are the deputies of the People’s Party (PDG), who disappeared in the previous period.
Answer. There is a big question: what will happen to these deputies? If we consider the trajectory that the deputies had in the previous period, there is none left of the PDG: the majority has moved to the center-right, or to the right. We have to see what happens with them. Now, if you analyze Parisi’s message, especially in the countryside – that we are not extremists, that we are here for the people, that we are for security and against immigration (he had this idea of placing mines in the north) -, it is a speech closer to Kast’s voter than to Jara’s.
Q. In whose favor does Parisi’s persistent anti-elite discourse now play?
R. This is the most populist vein, that of “we are the people against an elite”. It is a vein that Jeannette Jara, who has a lower-middle class life path, originally from Conchalí (municipality of Santiago), has cultivated much more and has exploited that life path a lot. But the argument is not convincing, because she is part of the continuity government, and has now done worse than her coalition. Which is the same thing that happened to Evelyn Matthei.
Q. Nobody expected Matthei to finish fifth.
R. These are terrible results. And his coalition (Chile Vamos), despite having about ten points more in Congress, is significantly damaged. For their part, the Republicans have more than doubled the number of their deputies.
Q. The Cambio por Chile (the coalition that brings together republicans, social-Christians and national-libertarians) obtained 42 deputies, compared to 34 for Chile Vamos.
R. And we must not forget that in the Change for Chile the largest party is the Republican Party, which can be said to actually be the largest party in the Chamber. Furthermore, they probably behave much more aligned, which gives them even more strength. Because the problem in the Chamber is not only that there are many parties, but that there is a lot of discord within the parties. The Republican Party will probably be much more disciplined, which is kind of what UDI had in the beginning: a much more programmatic party, much more disciplined, which would make Kast’s job easier if he wins in the second round.
Q. Do you see a relatively favorable Congress for Kast?
R. The biggest danger they face is to fall into what happened to them for the Constitutional Council: that they forget the mandate that this is an emergency government focused on crime and growth, and that with this overwhelming result they try to advance on other issues, such as values, in which they have no support, and there they remain trapped. There is the potential risk of misunderstanding a mandate. But to the extent that they are getting closer to Chile Vamos already have a significant majority.
Q. They were two seats away from an absolute majority
R. Who will play an important role will be the People’s Party (which elected 14 deputies). If added to the right-wing pacts, they would reach 90 deputies and four sevenths. But the PDG has often refused to define some strong programmatic lines. But Parisi has just said that the PDG owes no favors to anyone. And today it is in a much stronger position and what will happen in the future is the role it will play. Because he did not have any role in the previous period, in addition to many other reasons why he was not in Chile much. But it is different if he takes the position of leader of a party and acts as such, being in Chile and participating in debates.
Q. In what position is the right of Chile Vamos?
R. It’s something that needs to be looked at over a longer period. They did poorly last time with Sebastián Sichel, but they performed better in the parliamentary elections, even though they performed rather poorly with Matthei, they did not fail or fade. They continue to have an important role, and I believe that the difficulty they will have in a possible Kast government is precisely that of maintaining their identity so as not to be absorbed by the Republicans in terms of party brand. Because they will have to approve very popular measures in terms of growth, crime, etc., but they will have to maintain an identity that allows them to survive, and that what happened to Democratic Socialism during the Boric Government does not happen to them.
Q. In her speech after knowing the results, Jeannette Jara presented the second round as a clash between the far right and progressivism. How much room for growth can you give him by stating things in these terms?
R. The strategy requested by Jeannette Jara involves positioning the axis in the same terms as those of Boric against Kast (in the 2021 presidential elections), as a fight against the far right, for women’s rights. The question is how much she will be able to position him, considering that she also has something against that Boric didn’t have against: she is in power of a government that has very little consensus.
