Between the fear of kastization and the fear of Boric, the social right awaits “D-Day” this Sunday.

The storm that gripped for weeks the candidate of Chile Podemos +, Sebastián Sichel, and the possibility that the leadership of the sector will be taken away by the hardest right, embodied by José Antonio Kast, has made the social right, headed by the former helmsman of National Renewal, Mario Desbordes, is immersed in a deep reflection, since although they are separated by an ocean of ideological differences with the so-called Christian Social Pact, anti-communism unites them. “Boric is worse,” they say. That is why they have decided to opt for a permanent waking state between now and 21 November at night, when there is already crystal clarity on how the political forces in Parliament will be shaped.
With a job under rope, after the hard double defeat he suffered having lost re-election as president of RN and having finished fourth among four competitors in the official primary, today those who surround Desbordes share the ideals of a right that has to bet towards the center and not towards the extremes.
The project of the former Minister of Defense, supported by 10 years of work, preceded from the head by Cristián Monckeberg and branched by Senator Manuel José Ossandón, was on the ground – as several recognized – but not left aside. Ad portas de dar el vamos a foundation, and with the support of academics who joined during the campaign, such as Hugo Herrera, the sector is preparing to resist or, in case Sebastián Sichel passes to the second round, capitalize on a look that, in the middle of the presidential race, seems to have lost a lot of ground.
The only thing that is clear today in the sector is that, regardless of the presidential and parliamentary result, the right, as it is known today, will be severely stressed and in the midst of both an ideological and hegemonic deputy.
As the director of the School of Advertising of the UDP, Cristián Leporati, pointed out, in case of going to the second round J. A. Kast, “the political discourse of him is going to become much more flesh on the right. In the background, there is going to be a semantic turn in how the right put things. What the right has always done is what it has wanted to do, and not what it has been able to (…). A more sincere discourse would be installed, this right says what it thinks, it happened with Trump, and VOX, campaigns that can make your hair fall, but direct.”
In this context, and after a long period of reflection, and after having been “mistreated” by Sebastián Sichel’s team, the joint decision was made to join forces to make clear to the citizens the differences that exist between one right and another. The exercise, in addition to convincing voters, seeks to install a look and a discourse that they manage to impregnate and, thus, avoid being absorbed or pushed into irrelevance, considering the polarization of the speeches in the middle of the campaign, a fact that would play against them.
In practical terms, as they pointed out, they are seeking to give body to a space that seeks to avoid at all costs two possible scenarios. The first speaks of a struggle of ideas that, in practice, the most conservative sector would have greater facilities to install, due to the resonance caused by its proposals or “more thoughtless” locations. The other, that in the face of an eventual great defeat, that is, that neither of its two candidates passes to the second round, the idea born from the most conservative sector of RN is reinstalled, such as merging everything to leave a single party, a situation that would blur them completely, they said.
Through the foundation, accompanied by academics, and with Cristián Monckeberg contributing his own in the Constitutional Convention, they hope to be on a good footing for what will be the intense internal debate that will take place once they are already aware of the results on Sunday 21 at night.
Although Sebastián Sichel was never to his liking as a candidate and for his performance in the primaries, his look and his proposal fit perfectly with the position coming from the most liberal sector of RN, so the approach and collaboration on the ground, although it was not an easy decision, they explained, “was completely necessary.” With the most liberal wing of Evópoli, embodied mainly in Ignacio Briones, they have been concerned with installing the idea that, regardless of whether it is lost in the presidential election, there is a space for defense of those who are not willing to blend in with the speech of the leader of the Republican Party. This does not take away, in any case, let it be understood that, to a greater or lesser degree, if José Antonio Kast passes, “Gabriel Boric is more dangerous”.
For now, the decision has not been made on how to act after knowing the results of Sunday, “they are conversations that continue to take place”, what is certain is that, for or against their claims, the differentiation of the most conservative sector “must be refined perfectly”.
The dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Tomás Duval, indicated that, if the candidate of the Christian Social Pact goes to the second round, “it will cause a very strong tension in the center-right, because we are in a process of change, crisis and uncertainty, an issue that, seen from the conservative world, has rather reluctance to these processes than to join or participate in them.”
For now, expectations are set on taking a greater number of representatives out of their gaze in the parliamentarians, betting that the hardest discourse can have a degree of regression in that space. Víctor Blanco, member of the political commission of RN and close to Mario Desbordes, said that “we are working firmly for our candidates, who are all over Chile, who represent the social right, who trust that the people will support them, and who will elect us again for their consequence and ideas that they propose to the citizens. We believe that Sichel will do well, that he represents our sector, RN and the social right,” he said.
District 11, the quintessence of the right
The district that covers the communes of Las Condes, Vitacura, Lo Barnechea, La Reina and Peñalolén, is in the words of a UDI representative “the DNA of the right, universities, university students, professors, businessmen, public opinion, columnists, leaders, there they live, there they make their life, it is their territory”. His words seek to explain the fear that would exist in the party before the possibility of being left without representatives in that space: “It is as if the mouse Mickey was a candidate for Disney and lost,” he said.
This district considers the three communes qualified as those of the Rejection, where in the plebiscite they were almost the only spaces in which their gaze managed to impose themselves (Las Condes, Vitacura and Lo Barnechea), and just as the senatorial of the Metropolitan Region is considered the mother of all battles at the national level, this deputation is for the right.
In this context, what is at stake is the hegemony of the sector, the power of influence and representation in a space that mainly concentrates the economic power of the country, always linked to this rainbow space of political representation.
In the guild there is concern, since the irruption of the Christian Social Front could absorb in different places the classic voter of the party based on Sweden Avenue and, although not always get its candidate elected, it could subtract enough percentage of support for the UDI to leave more than one competitor out of the fight.
This is the case of the 11th district, where today the union has only one representative – they blame the administration of Jacqueline van Rysselberghe for having bet on its general secretary, Pablo Terrazas, in the last elections – and the only hope of remaining in the so-called “quintessence of the right”. This is the deputy who is going for re-election, Guillermo Ramírez, close to the current board.
The problem is that – according to private studies – its possibility would be more distant than thought at the time and that would explain the level of “ninth” deployment that has had the last month of the campaign, with a large number of the so-called “parades”, which are the squads that are installed in the street to distribute flyers and hold flags. There are those in the same party who say that, just by looking at the number of representatives campaigning in their favor, they believe that they could be talking about perhaps the campaign with “the highest electoral expenditure” in the country.
According to a survey commissioned by the Republican Party, beyond the interests of wanting to show their numbers on election days, these would coincide with other samples that pass from hand to hand in the sector, from other parties of the conglomerate.
On this occasion, the poll indicates that, as of November 12, the candidate with the greatest support would be the former mayor for Las Condes, Gonzalo de la Carrera (PR), with 13.6 percent, followed by the candidate of Evópoli, Francisco Undurraga, with 12.4, and in third place is the RN Catalina del Real, with 10.7 of the preferences. Then there are two other candidates of the Republican Party, such as Cristián Araya and Martín Carvajal, with 5.7 and 5.5 percent. Only later, and with a 5.2, you can see the name of the UDI Guillermo Ramírez.
While the district elects six representatives andThe Christian Social Front is out of the pact, therefore, with greater difficulties to install one of its own, the mere fact of bringing water to its mill would be putting at risk the representativeness of the guild in the district. In addition to Ramírez, among those also fighting for a quota are RN deputies Gonzalo Fuenzalida and Karin Luck, who would consider support of 3.5 and 2 percent, respectively. The sixth space – they recognize in the UDI – has a high probability of staying in the opposition, in the hands of Deputy Tomás Hirsch, who appears with an 8.2.
But, beyond one or another survey, the sentiment that runs through the corridors of the UDI is closer to that of a defeat than a comeback.
In this sense, there are those who have installed the thesis that, if this happens in more than one locality, it could take the party led by Javier Macaya to a level of insignificance to which they are not accustomed. As everywhere, there are also the optimists who appeal – as they pointed out – that the distribution figure after the first three places should favor the representative of the unionism.
For Leporati, “in symbolic terms, it is tremendously relevant for the right not to lose the bastion that has been the basis from which they build politics, exercise hegemony, exercise power, control the agenda setting.”

Original source in Spanish

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