After three months of negotiation behind closed doors, the parties of the regime, from the PC to the UDI, agreed on a new constitutional process, ” Agreement for Chile”. The proposal stems from the right wing grouped in Chile Vamos and the government backed it to seal the continuity of the neoliberal capitalism inherited from Pinochet’s dictatorship. Far from the interests of the 99%, we condemn the new pact and the tutored constituent of a model that only offers accumulation for the 1%.
By Joaquín A., Movimiento Anticapitalista
There were three months of negotiations between the overall parliamentary political arc and the government to give rise to a new constitutional process, a new pact that has as its precedent the Agreement for Peace and the new Constitution signed in the midst of the rebellion from Boric to the Pinochettist right wing. At that time they agreed on the impunity of human rights violators and the restrictions of the possible new constitution, a pact that in turn sought to remove the social force from the streets and postpone the social mood to the institutional channels of the regime inherited from the dictatorship through an electoral schedule.
The new pact came after the triumph of the rejection of the new constitution in the last plebiscite of September 4, a milestone that hastened the adjustment of coordinates of the government of Apruebo Dignidad (FA-PC) together with Socialismo Democrático ( former Concertación) and decidedly chose the path of continuity of the 30 years. Thus the main political references and state bureaucrats who have administered the long transition disembarked, justified in the defeat of the approval were mobilized politically and discursively to leave behind any trace of “progressivism” to mark the course of defeatism of “the extent of what is possible”. That adaptation accelerated by the Frente Amplio and the Communist Party was taken advantage of by the Chile Vamos agenda.
If the Agreement for Peace of November 15, 2019 was the lifeline of Piñera and the regime, the current pact is the attempt of a new boost of re-legitimacy to a model that fails to recover from the rebellion, that is why, beyond the differences between the various political parties in power, they agree on the need for a new institutional framework to continue with neoliberal capitalism and to be able to continue unloading the economic crisis on the back of the working people, the reason for a new supervised Magna Carta.
President Boric a few days ago already anticipated the pact declaring “it is preferable to have an imperfect agreement, than not to have one” in relation to the acceptance of the proposal that came from the right wing grouped in Chile Vamos. It was them who proposed the core of the “Agreement for Chile”, the new drafting body that will lead the process will have the name of “Constitutional Council” and its development will start with the formation of a committee of supposedly appointed experts (power technocrats!) of 24 people (12 from the Chamber of Deputies and 12 from the Senate). They will begin to draft a proposal in January. 50 people elected via the vote would work on that proposal, and it would be with parity and with proportional indigenous participation. Subsequently the “committee of experts” will again influence the text to harmonize the finalized proposal, ending with the ratification by the Congress. In other words, these are numerous anti-democratic mechanisms to preserve the parameters of the capitalist-neoliberal model.
The Communist Party deserves a separate paragraph. Last Friday Daniel Jadue stated that “the truth is that I prefer to spend the time of the defeat in our trench until the scenario is recomposed, but to think that the only scenario to dispute is the one imposed by the right wing, I think it is not correct. The scenarios are multiple and one is indeed, just as on November 15, not to sign and wait for the conditions to promote real changes”, a defeatist tone, of waiting and not of confronting and mobilizing the main social, student and union leaderships led by the CP in the country, although at the same time betting on continuing on the left of a process that clearly has no degree of progress, perhaps his statements were the last warning from a CP leader who continues to claim to be the left leg of the regime and who sees how every day they are losing that role that has constituted them as a party and that has served them to dress in red the neoliberal policies, adding more disappointment in their base. They did not listen to him and this time they adhere directly to the Pact to close ranks with a government adapted to the margins of the 30 years, the former constituent of the PC, Barbara Sepúlveda said so on Twitter while sharing the document of the pact: “It is not a perfect agreement, but none was going to be. The process must continue because Chile still needs a Constitution that overcomes the subsidiary State, enshrines social rights, advances in equality and gender parity and protects the environment. Besides, it will be done in parity”, sowing illusions that can have little result at a discursive level when the adaptation to the right wing is absolute, the leadership of the CP with this signature takes a new step to consummate itself as a party of the capital.
The proposal for a New Constitution erases any kind of possible democracy, even in the bourgeois parameters, demonstrating once again that when there is a pact with the right wing, it is the right wing that wins. It is evident that no demand that set by the agenda of the rebellion and the social urgencies that every day are more and more necessary in view of the deepening of the economic crisis will be the subject of the “Constitutional Council”.
That is why it is necessary to condemn and reject this new fraud of the representatives of the capital, to tear down the farce, to stop the government and confront the right wing, taking up the best of the social and political experience that the rebellion left as a lesson, adding organization and mobilization to open perspectives for a true free, sovereign and democratic constituent assembly on the road to a government of those who have never governed: the workers together with the peoples. With this horizon we invite you to join us in the Movimiento Anticapitalista.