Republican Signs – The Counter

The expectations of the national work and specifically of the agenda of the president-elect, were focused during the past week on the attendance of the latter to ENADE. Such was the coverage and emphasis on the issue that it came to momentarily leave in second place the question of who will be the future Minister of Finance, which is enough to say given the obsession with this point by the press almost majority, the businessmen of course and a good part of the establishment.
Those who voted for President-elect Boric, out of conviction in the need to initiate a process of profound transformations that allow building a new political, social and economic paradigm, more than those who did so, in the second round, to avert the totalitarian risk that Kast represented, also expect changes in other aspects that although they could appear as testimonials, they also represent a new way of exercising the presidency. A form more in line with the image, ideas and speech that the candidate Boric issued during the campaigns and what we know about him since the times of the student mobilizations. The same can be said of the coalition that supports it, with the obvious differences that are to be expected given the wide range of trends within it.
In the sense indicated, does a president in office or elected to an instance like ENADE or, in a country that calls itself secular, to a Te Deum, Catholic, evangelical or ecumenical, have to go? With regard to this last point, it should be noted, just by way of comment, that if it were about equanimity, the president would have to attend an infinity of similar acts only with respect to the different and innumerable Protestant churches that exist.
We could even ask ourselves the question of whether or not it has to go to the other classic of the “republican forms” such as the military parade.
Suddenly, given that the ENADE thing has just happened, perhaps the most appropriate thing is that such an instance, which is basically a call of big business, is attended by the president in office his Minister of Economy. And if, as was the case, the president-elect attends, then it would have been an excellent opportunity for the designated for that portfolio to attend on his behalf, if he had already been nominated, or failing that, some recognized advisor in the area. And I do not let the point pass to point out that it is time for the Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism to recover the relevance lost at the hands of the Treasury since the dictatorship and until today. The Ministry of Finance came to acquire the peso, without the counterweight it has, largely because the control of spending is a very functional tool to neoliberalism. But now it’s about overcoming this, isn’t it?
The question of “Republican gestures,” or rather the “necessity” or “convenience” of maintaining them, is also an underhanded way of containing the changes that the majority that voted last December hopes will begin to materialize soon. And of course, if there was no way to contain the new Constitution, or a Constitutional Convention mostly by structural changes, then at least we would have to go to maintain the “republican forms”. You start with something.

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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