One of the greatest surprises on Chilean election day over the weekend is the large presence of independent MPs in the Constituent Assembly, which will begin work on a new Fundamental Charter in June. Of 155 voters, 48 ​​presented themselves through independent lists of political parties, that is, 31%. If you add them to the 40 elected members who do not fight but ended up in polling stations under the auspices of some community – from different sectors – according to the New Constitution Observatory, the number of independent members in the body reaches 64%. In short, in addition to the 17 seats reserved for indigenous peoples, the united Assembly will have a total of 50 party activists (77 women and 78 men), who will have a maximum period of one year to pass new laws that will regulate the fate of Chile. …

Those who are not party activists were organized mainly according to lists, and two of them stood out from afar. The people’s list, which appeared as a result of social protests in 2019 and managed to formulate a socio-political organization, reached 27 seats in the Assembly (17.4%). The list of independent candidates for the new constitution, on the other hand, had 11 seats (7%) in the Assembly, which will meet at the Pereira Palace in Santiago and at the capital’s Congress headquarters. It is not a militant center-left list, which is defined as a “diverse, cross-cutting and community-driven group” operating “in civil society organizations, as well as in the academic, cultural, scientific, urban, communication and other social spheres. questions. “They had the non-militant with the highest voice, Benito Baranda, a psychologist widely known to the public for his many years of social work. In addition, 10 other voters were elected from independent rolls at the national level.

They shocked the Chilean political council and came as a complete surprise to analysts and leaders from all sectors. The prevailing forecasts indicated that they would receive between 8 and 16 seats. But according to political scientist Pamela Figueroa of the New Constitution Observatory, it was impossible to carry out previous electoral calculations because the new rules of the game were applied in practice. “Three new rules – parity, seats reserved for indigenous peoples, and lists of independent members – contributed to the fact that the Constituent Assembly represented something different from the typical representative bodies,” says the political scientist.

The success of the Independents in the elections in Chile is directly related to the crisis in the representativeness of political parties. According to the latest poll by the Center for Public Research (CEP), only 2% of Chileans trust any formations that have failed to renew their state (since 2006, Michelle Bachelet and Sebastian Piñera have changed their presidency).

The crisis of representative democracy is not new to Chile, and partly explains the already almost structural abstinence in elections, which has not been below 50% since the 2012 voluntary vote. in the country, the majority of voters also preferred to stay at home (57%).

The Independents have become a gravitational force in Chilean politics this weekend. When analyzing the lists and proposals of the elect – most of them are still unknown to the general public – it was observed that they have a transformative discourse, that they were committed to changing the Constitution and that they are not located on the right of the political spectrum. “48 independent MPs voted in October to amend the Constitution and to make the Constitution a civil one and not be formed by parliamentarians,” explains Baranda.

The popular list, for example, defines itself as anti-systemic, according to Daniel Trujillo, the national coordinator of the movement, who still has no headquarters or national leadership, and which has surpassed the center-left (who won 25, a big defeat) and almost caught up with the Communist Party and the Broad Front (28).

“We are an autonomous and independent civic movement organized to allow representatives of people without political parties who represent the values ​​of the uprising to participate in the Constituent Assembly,” says Trujillo. They originated in Piazza Italia, the epicenter of the Santiago protests, which grew as they merged with the territories, allowing them to make lists in almost every neighborhood. “We believe that the crisis that Chilean institutions have reached is due precisely to the fact that the party system has been taken over by the economic elite that controls Chile,” says the national coordinator of the People’s List, which measures the growth of all political organizations. to protect Sebastian Piñera and his government in the aftermath of the October 2019 social outbreak. “This is a great betrayal of the people mobilized for the uprisings, and therefore nothing with them,” says Trujillo.

He talks about “outdated” institutionalization and says that if the capitalist anti-system defines them as left, then the People’s List is on the left. They do not like the Piñera government or the economic elite that has taken over Chile. But this reinforces their diversity: “We are against the neoliberal model, but we have elected representatives who support Marxism and even Trotskyism, such as Comrade Maria Rivera, and other voters, such as the young lawyer Francisca Araun, 28, who was elected to the peasant a municipality, a Chilean latifundia region whose discourse is based on feminism, cooperation and environmental protection rather than class struggle, ”says Trujillo.

Since the Popular List was formed around the mobilization of the Piazza Italia – Plaza Dignidad, as it was renamed in some sectors – the symbols of protest belong to this group. As founder Giovanna Grandon, who became known as Purple pikachu for disguising himself as a creature from a video game. Or Sensual Spiderman, a key person in this group’s configuration, known for wearing a superhero costume.

The large number of independent candidates suggests that there will be no party discipline in the Chilean constituency, even with respect to 40 non-militants who arrive at the constitutional body with the support of parties. In any case, it will be similar to the Chilean Congress, where it has not been voted as a single bloc for a long time. However, after the establishment of the Constituent Assembly, in accordance with the new rules, new internal alliances began to form.

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