President-elect – The Counter

Gabriel Boric is the President-elect. A historic victory that the peoples of Chile and progressive humanity celebrate with excitement. As an important milestone in the revolutionary and impeccably democratic saga for which our country is universally known, loved and respected, personified in the figure of Salvador Allende. 
President-elect Gabriel Boric won by far. With the largest vote in history. He won because he and his command, and all the democratic parties headed by their main leaders, and all the important social organizations, and all the active people summoned by their most beloved and respected figures, made a great campaign in the second round, which without sectarianism or pettiness added to half the world.
But, especially, President-elect Gabriel Boric won far because he has a larger popular base. The one that ended the dictatorship and today, united, increased and active, demands and will continue to demand the necessary reforms. He won because in this round that majority rose to vote for him. Also to stop the cars to the far right, as an analyst of that sector recognized. He won far away because that day the youth of the people, mostly women, rose to vote, who before gave an overwhelming triumph to the Approval and the Convention.
The Electoral Service (Servel), which by the way has been a great protagonist in a year of innumerable elections, reviewed the participation in several of these by identity card, known as RUT. He found that what changes from one election to another, sometimes surprisingly, is not so much individual preferences as the people who turn out to vote. 
The register of voters of the Servel coincides with that of members of the AFP, they are the same RUT, and both cover almost the entire population over 18 years of age. We know that the bulk of the electorate is actually the immense mass of workers who constantly enter and leave the precarious but numerous salaried occupations that move the country’s economy, whose wages make up the main part of its income. And that he works on his own in the meantime.
That is, working people experience something similar in their participation in salaried jobs and elections. Almost all occupy a salaried position at the turn of a few years, but although the number of occupations available is very considerable, only a few people manage to maintain one without interruptions. Similarly, the majority of voters vote, but only a minority do so in all elections. The workers who occupy the many salaried positions available in a given month are not the same as those who occupy them in the following month or in the previous month. In the same way, the voters who vote in one election are not the same as those who vote in the next, or the previous one. 
We know that this is a very young workforce, that half of them are women, and it is quite skilled. We also know that when he accesses a salaried job he earns on average just under a million pesos, although half earn less than half of that figure. That is, we know that the mass of the people and the electorate is made up of salaried workers but also that, just as the occupied ones change from month to month, the voters are not the same from one election to another. 
Thus, as one influential journalist wrote, elections are won by “not the one who can convert more loyalists on the other side, but the one who gives his own more powerful reasons to get up to vote” (Matamala 2021). How in this round the working people voted en masse, as never before, revealed clearly what their real political preferences are. The result was the great victory of President-elect Gabriel Boric. 
Obviously, all elections are defined by the working people who at every opportunity decide to go to the polls. The elites shine omnipresently, applaud themselves and believe that the world revolves around their becomings and dalliances. But in the votes they do not weigh much because they are very few. 
The bud of the Pinochet elite, restored on September 11, 1973 with criminal brute force by traitorous hand of others, then taken over politics with its money, is concentrated, entrenched, prey to fear, in three segregated communes of the rest of the country. There it exhibits some of everyone’s wealth that has been appropriated and consumes a good slice of the third of the gross domestic product (GDP) that is pocketed each year. But the aforementioned three communes do not house even two percent of the total electorate. 
Knowing This, and after its defeats in the Apruebo and the Convention, in the recent presidential elections the right concentrated all its considerable resources and power, in a lightning counteroffensive that managed to mobilize the conservative people to vote. This is numerous and respectable, hardworking, serious, honest and usually calm people, but of rather traditional convictions and customs and often inclined to vote for the right. 
The experience of Europe and that of Chile in the twentieth century teaches us that, from evening to evening, in difficult times, when their hopes are frustrated, when those who could and should solve their problems are not up to the task or abandon that task, a part of this sector of the people can be encouraged by scoundrels. Until it becomes a frightened mob that reacts in a cowardly way, revolting in an aggressive and criminal way against part of the people themselves, whom they identify as scapegoats for their pressing unresolved problems.
Like the rest of their brethren, the conservative people today are overwhelmingly made up of working people who constantly enter and leave precarious formal occupations and derive most of their income from wages. And they work on their own in the meantime. 
It is likely that the small fraction of the people who work most of the time or almost always on their own, such as small merchants, peasants, transporters or artisans, among others, constitute perhaps a somewhat larger proportion in the conservative people. Anyone can see this by talking to those who exercise these trades. 
Those who promote progressive and just causes usually take into account and treat conservative working people with respect. One of the great successes of the candidacy of the left, during the presidential runoff, was precisely to morigerate those aspects of his program and symbols of his campaign that are not well understood and sometimes irritate the conservative people. 
A beautiful and emotional anecdote from the recent election says a lot about it. It happened to a relative of victims of the dictatorship who at that time decided to go to talk for the first time about politics with her attentive landlord, in the grocery store where she usually does her shopping. When asked who he was going to vote for in the second round, he replied that he would do it for the far-right candidate, for fear of communism, he said.
She calmly told him that her father, a university professor and communist, had been beaten to death by Pinochet’s henchmen and that they had never found anything but a tooth from him. The greengrocer was stunned, he had no idea that his landlady was who she is. Soon she returned bringing the Rettig report as a gift and when she visited them at her house shortly after she observed them, the greengrocer and his wife, leafing through the atrocities of the dictatorship documented there, between sobs. They voted for Boric.
There are such cases, but the basis of the triumph of President-elect Gabriel Boric is that in the second round that part of the working people, especially young women, who since 18-O has been deploying again an impressive political activity that gave victories to the Approval and Convention, rose to vote for him. This had not happened in the first presidential round and that is why the right managed to reach the first place there, although by nose. 
Now they gave the victory to the left, because they know that a political force is needed in the government willing to carry out the necessary reforms. To put an end to the abuses and correct the distortions that began and have been dragging since September 11, 1973. 
Working people do not always rise up to vote for the left. His participation in politics is not permanent, far from it, that would be something exhausting. It is not made up of hardened militants, whom he nevertheless respects, but of people from his work and his home. Generally overwhelmed by strenuous days and dedicated to her own without much time for disquisitions or political quarrels. 
For this reason and as classical political science discovered, popular participation in politics follows long cycles that include prolonged periods of calm chicha, where the people stay at home and do not go out to demonstrate massively or vote. At that time, politics developed mainly in the corridors of power, to the extent of the possible agreements to be reached in Parliament. 
However, from time to time the working people burst into politics en masse. In Chile it has done so every decade on average over the course of a century. To be respected and pushed from below for those at the top to carry out the necessary reforms to end the abuses of the powerful and allow society as a whole to continue to progress. 
This it is easily forgotten by politicians, advisers, theorists and commentators, who easily fall into what classical political science called “parliamentary cretinism”. That is, the forgetfulness that in periods of popular political activity deployed, this is done mainly in the streets. Because only there lies the popular force capable of confronting the powerful and forcing the realization of the necessary reforms, which they always oppose in a fierce and tenacious way.
Now, for example, many analysts in the mainstream media try to convince us that the victory of the President-elect is not due to a popular phenomenon, but generational and gender, which certainly is also, or to the supposed willingness of the candidate to abdicate the realization of the necessary reforms. In short, they try to convince that President-elect Gabriel Boric would have won because he would have expressed his willingness to let everything remain more or less the same, only with different and fresher faces. 
On the contrary, the victory of President-elect Gabriel Boric is a stark reminder of the continued participation of the people in politics. It is the fourth recent massive popular irruption, after the 18-O, the Approval and the Convention. This has been fairly generally recognized by leading political figures, starting with the President-elect himself and his political advisers. Almost all of them have said that the Chilean people irrefutably expressed their willingness to make the necessary changes. 
In his remarkable victorynight speech, President-elect Gabriel Boric begins by saying: “The same commitment and enthusiasm will be necessary during the years of our Government so that, together, we can sustain the process of change that we have already begun to go through, step by step. The people must remain mobilized.” Shortly before he had said that he not only listens to his advisers but also the voice of the people.
The President-elect ends his victory speech by quoting none other than President Salvador Allende. Precisely the universal example of an impeccably democratic politician who knew how to lead his people uplifted and rely on their deployed strength to carry out the necessary reforms with the required determination. 
Once these objectives had been achieved, as appropriate, President Allende was also aware of the need to broaden his political base and consolidate what had been achieved. He failed to impose that line in time to avoid the appalling defeat of September 11, 1973. However, put in that historical trance, Salvador Allende did not resign. On the contrary, he did not hesitate to offer his life to respond properly to the loyalty of his people.
The people do not always rise up to vote for the left. But it does so when it considers it essential to confront the powerful decisively, to end abuses and carry out the necessary reforms. On those occasions, the people expect the left to fulfill its task with the determination of Salvador Allende.

The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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