A recent conversation with residents of Plaza Santa Ana, in Lo Espejo; an impromptu walk through the center of Santiago or through the streets of his native Punta Arenas; a meeting with residents of La Legua; a meeting of the political committee of ministers in Renca; and a stay in a hostel -owned by a retired teacher- during her tour in Arica. All these events, led by President Gabriel Boric, in the opinion of analysts, reveal a strategy of La Moneda to highlight the personality of the President in order to capture a republican story, based on face-to-face contact, which also serves to mitigate the result of the surveys, which although they place it in a low valuation, -in the opinion of observers- said drop is not appreciated in the street, where on the contrary it is well received.
The President’s strategy, in the midst of the 21st century, constitutes a mirror of the way of governing of former presidents prior to the coup d’état, such as Salvador Allende himself or Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez -whose administration lasted between 1958 and 1964- who is remembered for maintain direct contact with people, such as his usual walks to the Palacio de La Monada. In that sense, in some way, what the head of state is looking for is to recover a story that was generated in contact with people, which was how politics was historically made in Chile, based on dialogue and face-to-face .
This is what the publicist and academic from the Diego Portales University, Cristián Leporati, believes, who thinks that after the dictatorship, and considering the level of polarization that has been increasing in the country, somehow, the presidents were moving away from the people , in terms of face to face on the street, also due to the lack of communication skills, which, in his opinion, former President Michelle Bachelet did have at the time. From this perspective, the head of state seeks to establish a story that maintains certain similarities with the communication display of the former President, who gave him her support in the second presidential round and with whom he met a few days ago, after his arrival in the country. .
“For the same reason, I think that what Boric is doing is simply recovering a republican narrative, traditional in Chile, with the risks that this implies today, for everything that is happening in the country, but he understands that it is a reasonable risk. and also because there is another reason, which alludes to his personal attributes, to an empathy that Boric has shown since he was a deputy and also in the presidential campaign, so I doubt that he will take advantage of it communicationally as a political strategy, but basically it is his nature, and it is something that is natural and spontaneous. And that is good for him and for a government that until now is based more or less between a minister like Mario Marcel, the tranquility of Camila Vallejo and the leadership and empathy with the people that he has President Boric,” says Leporati.
However, experts believe that while the deployment of this attribute of empathy and closeness to people as a communication strategy is positive, abusing this resource should be avoided, as it may be on the edge of populism. An example of the above occurred during the recent presidential tour of Arica, when the president decided to stay in a hostel, owned by a retired teacher, in a stay that he recorded with photographs that his communications team went viral.
Now, the expert in political journalism and director of the Journalism Department of the Alberto Hurtado University, Ximena Orchard, believes that this story in President Boric is not necessarily something new, but rather it is a commitment to reissue or revitalize a strategy that he gave good returns during his campaign. The academic considers that “it is an attribute of closeness that has been installed and built around her person, since that period, and that now could serve her, in a more adverse context, with a slightly lower approval than at the beginning of his administration and with a politically polarized and tense context, where his management has not been exempt from criticism, more than his figure”.
In this regard, Orchard points out that “if the President manages to install the seal of closeness as a seal of his Government and not of his person, it would clearly be a triumph, because until now, those attributes are rather associated with him as a figure , and perhaps also to the spokesperson minister, who has had an outstanding and well-recognized performance in general. It seems to me that they are not necessarily attributes that have been transferred to the entire cabinet, although there are some people who have been better in tune, either with the press or in general with a close relationship with the people. But it seems to me that, in terms of work on the ground, this is concentrated above all around the President. Now, I think that his figure is probably the main asset of his Government and, therefore, it seems to me that it is an appropriate strategy, that it is not something new, but rather reinforces an attribute that he already has and for which he is recognized”.
A strategy that seeks to counteract the narratives of the surveys
Both academics agree that President Boric -understanding him as an individual figure- is betting on building a less mediated relationship, based on a direct relationship with people, since he understands that it is the people who ultimately value the attributes of the leaders. A strategy that, in the opinion of analysts, seeks to counteract the narratives installed from the polls, related above all to the decline in his popularity and the negative evaluation of his government’s management. In this regard, the question arises about the effectiveness of these surveys, in light of which Cristián Leporati believes that the vast majority of them start from an ideological bias.
In this context, the publicist and academic from the Diego Portales University considers that “in some way, what the surveys are reflecting is the thinking of an elite -whether from the left, from the right or from the business world- where it is reflected as an ideologically this country understands politics, and from that perspective, I think they are asking biased questions, with methodologies that are quite debatable, except for the CEP, which does use a methodology that allows for several certainties, so the surveys are generating a fairly large imaginary in citizens with respect to a government in power. But, also, what a survey normally does is measure a system -in its entirety- and it is not that the President in particular is being punished, it is also punishing the President, all the ministers, the undersecretaries and the blindness of a political system that is not capable of understanding the most relevant problems of the people is also being punished.
For Leporati, that bias in the polls would make it possible to understand why this negative view of the figure of the President is not reflected in his face-to-face relationship with people. And in addition, the publicist believes that there is another factor that could explain the president’s closeness and empathy with the citizenry -beyond his personal attributes- which is that, in his opinion, Chile is a fairly “patterned” country in terms of authority. , where said authority generates respect and is a face and a famous person, where “the President reaches the breath of a star, very much in the Hollywood line, and is a media person, where the media also contribute to the construction of these figures that they go far beyond the position. It is something that has happened with all presidents, more or less loved, “he points out.
If it is a strategy, or rather it is something natural and spontaneous, there is certainty that President Gabriel Boric seeks to overcome that image of a President who is part of an elite, sitting at his desk, away from the people and afraid to go outside. Now, analysts agree that the biggest challenge is for that empathy to go beyond the mere figure of the president and be favorable to a government that has had to face serious problems in its first months in office. For now, from La Moneda they are committed to taking advantage of a story that allows them to navigate with a little more calm in the turbulent social and political context.
