End of the Kingdom

It was impossible to imagine such a disastrous end to a government as the one we are witnessing. If we already had the terrible end of President Michelle Bachelet's second term (her first administration was infinitely better) etched in our minds and memories, what we are witnessing these days is nightmarish. Every day brings another act of recklessness, a public policy mistake, a reprehensible government decision, or simply a blunder. I am not unaware that the media is shifting its editorial line to the right in anticipation of the arrival of the new president, José Antonio Kast, nor am I blind to the obvious: the Boric administration is about to be demolished. There are three reasons for this demolition. The first is the youth of the outgoing leader: barely 40 years old with a useful political life expectancy of more than a quarter of a century. The second refers to the collective agent that played a leading role in this outgoing government: a “new left” that arrived emboldened and is leaving with very little to show for itself, but which is there, like an inevitable phenomenon, impossible to escape. The third reason is the balance sheet, especially on the part of the parties that governed alongside the new left of the Frente Amplio: the center-left has enormous reservations, and these will become apparent from now on. One need only read the Sunday press on the first day of March. If Christian Democrat Senator Yasna Provoste (from the rebellious wing of the Christian Democrat Party) is left with “the image of an improvisational government,” with a “frivolous, voluntaristic style that will go down in history,” Valparaíso Governor Rodrigo Mundaca (who comes from social movements) notes that “a government that transfers the presidential sash to someone who is diametrically opposed to it is a failure” and warns that “I am not one of the indulgent leftists who will go to the Plaza de la Constitución on March 7 to bid him farewell.” These two damning judgments, published by the newspaper El Mercurio, are eloquent enough to describe a bad end to a reign. These three reasons explain why demolition is imminent: to abort now, while the memory of the Chilean people is still fresh, the possibility of a second Boric candidacy in four years' time. The calculation is not wrong: starting on March 11, Kast's new government will face a predisposition to opposition criticism that, without moderation and prudence on the part of the new president, will quickly fall prey to the wrath of the most extreme left. The question will be whether this extreme anger, especially among communists (who have already announced street protests starting on March 8, Women's Day, as if they were a naturally feminist party), will drag the rest of the left along with it: the Broad Front has a natural tendency to be swept up by the passion of the streets, a passion that the Communist Party (PC) will try to mobilize. The maturity of the Frente Amplio will be measured by whether it is definitively oriented toward governing, or whether Boric's government was the result of chance, an accident of history. As for Democratic Socialism, its miniature parties will face the challenge of defending what can be defended and remaining silent in the face of the unpresentable: the problem is that there are too many unpresentable things, and one of them directly concerns the socialists (the case of former undersecretary Manuel Monsalve). The Chinese cable scandal, which aroused such fury in the US government through its border patrol ambassador, received a political and communicational response from the Boric government that ranges between fear of reprisals and recklessness. The fiscal deficit for 2025 has sparked significant criticism from leading economists in the country, and a renowned economist such as David Bravo sees “in labor matters [that] this is the worst government since the return of democracy.” There are too many open flanks after the crushing defeat of communist presidential candidate Jeannette Jara just under three months ago. The political, communications, and intellectual infrastructure that will be put in place starting in March must be taken very seriously. The political infrastructure is evident, and it does not rely so much on the hard-right (Republican) and center-right (Chile Vamos) parties, but rather on trade unionism, which is the true invisible glue of the government, as it permeates even ministers and undersecretaries who are not party members. The communications infrastructure is there: it remains true that the economic ownership of the media shapes the editorial line, especially in the face of an incoming government whose ideological cement will highlight the distance that separates it from the outgoing government. As for the intellectual infrastructure, the various right-wing worlds have never had at their disposal so many study centers and think tanks, as well as private universities that are not politically neutral when it comes to taking a position on matters that concern them. It is in light of this state of affairs that the left, each in its own way and with its own agenda, will have to reinvent itself. The challenges are titanic. Some of them have to do with the mediocre record of a government that was too often sloppy. But there is another dimension that is even more important, and it comes from the world itself: everywhere, left-wing parties are experiencing electoral turmoil. When local and global reasons for left-wing parties in the same country, in this case Chile, come together, then it becomes clear that they are exposed to what astronomers call a threat of a possible extinction event. The first step to avoid this is to recognize the problem and give ourselves enough political and intellectual time to address it.