What is expressed today in the streets, squares, lobbys, bars, as well as in the most intimate family spaces, is a complete discomfort against inequality in all its forms and in the most diverse scenarios. It is not only unrest against socio-economic and class inequality, but also against gender inequality and machismo, against ethnic-racial inequality and racism, against territorial inequality and political centralism, against inequality gerontocracy in all spheres of power, against cultural inequality and social elitism, and thus we could continue to point out unrest and discontents that run through the country.
In the face of this, various actions, strategies and programmes have been lifted from the most representative political bodies, which still reflect these same contradictions. On the one hand, from the municipalities and the communes, strategies of direct participation, citizen consultation and other ways of including citizens and the people in the construction of solution roads are erected. On the other hand, from Congress, parliamentarians design strategies for change and transformation, many of them well-intentioned, but that crash into the structures of privilege that reproduce social inequality, and impede progress in any solution path.
However, the progress of one and the other is very uneven. While the former is no-obsessed, underestimated by both the spheres of power, the state and the government, as well as in the media themselves, the latter concentrates all the interest of the political class and the states in power. It seems that the government, the state, the media, the entrepreneurs, the elites, all of them, are betting on an exit from their very institutionality, which is nevertheless the most questioned of all on the streets, and against which all the unrest is synthesized and against which all the unrest is synthesized and discontent we were already commenting. So the question and the question: is it possible to rely on an output from these instances? Everything seems to indicate that it doesn’t.
As he well synthesized a banner on the street, “what happens to the country is that the solution is in the hands of the problem.” And nothing better reflects this thesis, than the profile and composition of the current Chamber of Deputies, an instance that today has a fundamental role, and from where either a strategy of inclusion and citizen participation comes out, or a strategy that reproduces and reinforces a strategy that reproduces and maintains the political forms of social inequality. For example, go some data from the resumes of the deputies published on the official website of the National Congress.
a) 79% are men
b) 29% are over 60, and only 23% under the age of 40
c) 2.6% are only of Mapuche origin
d) 45% come from Santiago
e) 43% come from unsubsidized private schools
f) 26% comes from the 6 communes of Santiago’s upper-ranking district
g) 89% have university studies
Likewise, in Congress we see no representation of almost any social, cultural and demographic minorities, such as Chileans abroad, population with disabilities, LGTBI population, immigrants, among many others.
There is no doubt, Deputies in Chile have ceased to be popular representatives, to become representatives of powerful groups: they represent men, not women (machismo and patriarchy); white people, not indigenous peoples (racism); to the rich and wealthy, not to the people or the middle classes (classism); to the capital, Santiago, and not to the provinces and regions (centralism); to the social and cultural elite, and not to the ordinary citizen (elitism).
The citizens, the Chilean people, call for a new Social Pact, expressed in a new Political Constitution of the Chilean State. However, the output currently offered generates the same mistrust that those who promote it give us. How to trust these Members, when we see that they are representatives of the states of power, of the privileges and the privileged of the most diverse forms of social inequality: classism, machismo, gerontocracy, centralism, racism , of elitism.
More seriously, how to rely on a form of election of representatives to a constituent body, called the Assembly or Convention, which tends to reproduce in the political and power field, these same structures of social inequality that predominate in the Chilean society; how to rely on a constituent constituent body thus, when instead of giving voice to the unequal, it only reproduces the exclusion and discrimination of majorities for the benefit of the always powerful minorities.
That is why we say: welcome gender parity, welcome the quotas reserved for original peoples, welcome new rules for participation of independents … but we also say that this is not enough. The discomfort expressed on the streets is that, and more. It is necessary to extend parity to the equitable representation of classes, territories, generations, as well as to open the option of quotas reserved for the various social, cultural and demographic minorities.
Cabil-DEMOS Collective
The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
