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As we reported last week, “CHILE VOTERS: OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH THE NEW,” voters in Chile – especially the young – came out en masse earlier this month to deal a blow to the country’s entrenched political parties. They voted for a hard-left special assembly to draft a Constitution that is expected to lead to a significant increase in social spending.
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the constitutional assembly elections stunned analysts and showed the country’s frustrations with its ruling class and the elites.
Eugenio Tironi, a sociologist, told the paper the election results were the “institutionalization of the 2019 social explosion,” a reference to the violent protests that broke out in the country resulting in the deaths of 30 people.
Andres Velasco wrote in Project-Syndicate.org,
“The center-left parties that have governed Chile for 24 of the last 30 years fared even worse and will control just one seat in six – fewer than a new alliance of the Communist Party and other far-left parties, and fewer than the People’s List, a motley assemblage of radical groups that grew out of the 2019 protests. Independent candidates – environmentalists, feminists, local leaders, and advocates of devolution to Chile’s regions – were the overwhelming winners.”
The FT reported that President Sebastián Piñera’s center-right coalition did not win enough seats to challenge reforms, which will likely result in significant increases on pensions, health care, and education. The paper pointed out the country’s stock market dropped 10 percent last week.
The paper reported that about 60 percent of voters stayed home during the vote on 15 and 16 May. The election was for the constitutional assembly and municipal elections. The presidential election is in November, and a pollster told the paper it could mean an entirely different result. (The Guardian reported a number of municipalities that traditionally voted for the right went with the socialist.)
The new Constitution will replace the one crafted in 1980 during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which critics called illegitimate.
TREND FORECAST: As we have reported on in detail and have forecast, the massive 2019 protest that swept the country – and one of many erupting across the globe – has set the stage for anti-establishment political movements. Trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age and die. The “New World Disorder” trend that we forecast has just been born.