This Saturday, June 4, at the premises of the former National Congress, in the center of Santiago, the general councils of the three parties that make up Chile Vamos were held- National Renovation (RN), Independent Democratic Union (UDI) and Political Evolution. (Evópoli)- with the aim of defining its position regarding the Exit Plebiscite of the constituent process. As expected, the Opposition conglomerate unanimously decided to reject the draft of a new Constitution, opting to make its resolution public before the Harmonization Commission concludes its work and before the final text is presented to the country, the next July 4th.
It is a decision that seeks to compromise a new Magna Carta, regardless of the result of the Plebiscite, and that has certain unique characteristics, which respond to a strategy of the center right to promote a discourse of unity around the Rejection, using a discourse that coins concepts such as “citizenship” and “territory”, and empowering the communicational role of the constituents, over the political figure of the party presidents. An idea to reject in order to seek a new mechanism that ensures a new Constitution that is not shared by the Republican Party, from where they claimed their own path that poses problems in achieving understanding within the opposition bloc to the Government.
Although initially, the helmsmen of the three conglomerates had decided not to participate in the press conference, once the day was over, in order to give the spokesperson to the conventional representatives of said sector, in any case the senator and president of RN, Francisco Chahuán, briefly referred to the decision. “We are going to reject it, but we are hopeful that a new Constitution is required to unite Chileans. Indeed, we believe that we must have a new fundamental charter, and we have made that very clear in the political vote that today has been approved practically unanimously”, stated the parliamentarian.
Her peer from Evópoli, Luz Poblete, who from her party has been positioned as a new female leadership that has achieved a relevant media role in recent weeks, assured that “those who made this process fail have been the same conventional ones, those who have led today to take a political vote, to establish a position on this particular text, but not to have a new Constitution, because Chile deserves a new Constitution, but one that represents everyone”.
In this regard, Poblete added that Political Evolution is a conglomerate born in democracy, which represents a liberal center-right and has a history in this regard, such as participating in the town halls or citizen meetings convened in the second government of former President Michelle Bachelet; in addition to proposing to Chile a proposal for a new Constitution in 2019; and finally to propose, through its constituents, initiatives that, in its opinion, sought to make this process a success. A notion with which they seek to differentiate themselves from the other parties (RN, UDI and the Republican Party), which are linked to a more traditional right.
But beyond the disagreements that may exist within the Opposition, they agree first of all in their option of Rejection of the constituent process, and also in their disagreement with the idea of ”approve to reform”, which arose from conventionalists such as Fuad Chahin (DC ) and that has some support in sectors close to the former Concertación. On the right, they maintain that it is a very bad draft text, with many inconsistencies, and that therefore practically all its content would have to be modified.
The risk of “possible scenarios”
Faced with the hypothetical scenario that Rejection is finally the option that prevails in the Exit Plebiscite on September 4, in Chile Vamos they prefer to avoid defining now what would be the mechanism to generate a new Constitution. In this sense, the former Minister of Defense and former president of the RN, Mario Desbordes, assured that “what we have to look for is an agreement and there are many alternatives, but today we cannot say what the alternatives are, because the government coalition and above all All I Approve Dignity cannot be hunted with a plan B, which I understand, because if they tell the citizens that there is a defined plan B in case of winning the Rejection, they have told me in private that with that they would be almost doing a called to vote Rejection, and they want it to pass, which seems legitimate to me”.
A search for alternatives that, for the political analyst and academic of the Autonomous University, Tomás Duval, opens an inconducive debate at this point, since in his opinion the September Plebiscite is binary-between Approval and Rejection-in whose variables the constituent process will play. Duval believes that in this sense, great care must be taken, since when scenarios that do not yet exist begin to be proposed, this can discourage a type of undecided voter or downplay the importance of the citizen consultation, configuring a complex scenario in recent months. .
With what the beginning of the deployment of the communication campaigns and the political strategies of one and another sector means, the academic added that “the campaigns begin to propagate the slogans most typical of the blocs, trying, on the one hand, I Approve Dignity to draw a scenario similar to that of December last year, which was very favorable for them, and therefore they are going to play all the cards in that scenario. with the people, about the constitutional text. Here we are probably going to see a much greater deployment of slogans, and probably the issue that defines the Constitution is not even written in the text, and it can go to either side of the debate in the last instance.”
Emphasizing this strategy of Chile Vamos that proposes the use of a familiar language, seeking to relate directly to the problems and citizen demands, the conventional Carol Brown (UDI) declared this Saturday that what they seek is to become part of a “social majority, which in the street and in the territory, he has expressed that he does not like the product that this Convention has presented”. She added that in her opinion it is a constitutional proposal that disunite the country and that it does not take care of problems such as security, terrorism and drug trafficking, and that it worsens health and housing, among other matters. Finally, Brown also made reference to the possible expropriation of pension savings, an idea that is false and that raises the eternal debate about the ethical limits of campaigns and the dangerous use of “fake news” and disinformation.
