“Neoliberalism was born in Chile and here it will die”
JVL Introduction
Sue Lukes writes in Labour Hub about the enormous victory for the left in the recent Presidential elections in Chile.
The scale of the victory cannot be underestimated with Boric winning 56% of the vote in the election runoff against the far-right candidate José Antonio Kast (whose father had been a member of the Nazi party).
Boric’s victory is also an enormous victory for the Palestinians, with Chile having the largest diaspora Palestinian community outside the Middle East, and Boric a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause (see separate post on this here).
The polarisation in the country is great. Boric has no established Party to support him, but was elected on a wave of popular mobilisation which earlier in the year had produced a new constitution drawn up by popularly elected delegates and voted in last October, approved by 78% of voters.
The brief for the new constitution is to reduce the power of the rich and the big companies and to create a fairer more equal state.
In this analysis published in Labour Hub, Sue Lukes looks at what made this victory possible – and at the problems and dangers it will inevitably face.
- Sue Lukes was Chair of the Chile Committee for Justice, which campaigned for the dictator Pinochet to be brought to justice. She is now an Islington Labour Councillor for Highbury East Ward.
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Mon 3 Jan 2022. Read the original here.
“Neoliberalism was born in Chile and here it will die”
Loading article text…
Boric, as is patently obvious, is no socialist and has the interests of Chile’s wealthy elite at heart.
“Popular expectations will be quickly dispelled by the incoming government. Boric had already shifted the axis of his platform to the right during the campaign, picking up talking points on “security” and other issues from the playbook of his fascistic opponent.
Boric has a proven record of defending private property relations and upholding the capitalist market. A radical university student leader in the 2011 education protests, he has since 2014 sat in the lower house of the Chilean Congress, lending at critical moments support to the government of the day.
In 2019 he infamously entered into national unity talks with the right-wing government of billionaire President Sebastian Piñera to head off the massive anti-capitalist demonstrations. He then proceeded to support “in general” draconian and anti-democratic laws that have permitted the criminalization of all forms of protest.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/21/chil-d21.html
A very encouraging report. However, Boric’s success is going to depend upon his government’s relationship with the armed forces, and on their relationship with the CIA, which will certainly disapprove of Boric’s victory!