A Failure of Readership

CHILE - In Brief 18 Dec 2017 by Igal Magendzo

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Since 1958, the only right of center politician to win an election was Sebastian Piñera. Now he has done it again. Despite a poorer than expected showing in the first round, Piñera triumphed in last Sunday’s runoff, surprising everyone, including, it seems, himself. Piñera won in almost every region of the country. Piñera’s win seems to put an end to a long string of failures on the part of the Concertación and Nueva Mayoría, failures which have less to do with leadership and more with readership. Since at least 2011, the center-left has failed to properly read the public mood. It did so when students protested for free higher education, when others demanded a new constitution, when people took to the streets in favor of environmental issues or marriage equality. The left read all of this as the collapse of the dominant economic and political model in place since the return to democracy. It read things wrong. The discontent was clear. Most Chileans felt daily and on a personal level the effects of inequality, corporate abuse and debt. Students were protesting because their families were paying high interest rates to pay for low quality education. Other were protesting because they could, because increasingly prosperous Chileans were moving into a post-material state were things like the environment, indigenous rights and sexual diversity matter. But there was a failure of readership. The Concertación and Michelle Bachelet read these protests as confirming their own long-held beliefs. Finally Chileans were challenging the system imposed by the dictator. There were finally rejecting market based capitalism in favor of state-led development. The consensus-based democracy ...