For the first time in its history, the PCCh will lead the electoral fight against the right, and also against the far-right. Along with this, we witnessed the total debacle of the parties of the former Concertación (most of them currently work within the SD coalition. Founded in 1988, presidential candidates under its banner have won every election since the end of the military regime in 1990, up until the victory of conservative candidate Sebastián Piñera in the Chilean presidential elections in 2010), and the absolute defeat of the candidate of Boric’s party. Against all the predictions of the businessmen, who expected the consolidation of the ‘moderation of the political centre’ and the ‘politics of agreements’, the most leftward wing of the current government prevailed. This fact is spiced up by the clear regression of Matthei, the candidate of the traditional right, and the surging in the polls of Kast from the far right (Kast won the first round in the 2021 presidential elections with almost 28% of the vote, against Boric’s almost 26%, but lost in the second round obtaining only 44%). Undoubtedly, polarisation is growing in the run-up to the November presidential elections.
In this context, those of us who fear the probable triumph of the far right have good reason to fear. Not only because the votes in the official primaries were the lowest in its history (the government lost almost 400,000 votes), but also because the Boric government and its parties have provoked massive disappointment among millions of voters. An administration absolutely dominated by the interests of big business and the imperialist multinationals, whose axis was to try to shut down any vestige of the social outbreak of 2019 in order to guarantee the continuity of capitalist rule in Chile. This is why less than 10% of the electorate went to the polls this Sunday, and those who did were to punish the Democratic Socialism and the Broad Front.
Jeannette Jara and the Communist Party do not lead a project of social, trade union and political reorganisation from the grassroots, nor do they fight for the coordination of all sectors of struggle, a politicisation marked by an anti-capitalist programme and class independence of those who seek to confront the far-right. This is not a call to prepare to take to the streets, to close them off in all the grassroots organisations, to deal them an electoral defeat while we crush them throughout the country. The other way round.
Jara heads the reorganisation of the same block of parties in Boric’s government that has facilitated the rise of the far-right, through lies, corruption and deceit. As if that were not enough, they have repressed those who struggle, pushed through a series of repressive laws and passed impunity for cops and militiamen, criminalised social unrest, and strengthened anti-democratic elements of this rotten political regime.
The signs are more than clear, and do not bode well for anything new or good. Believing that the far-right can be stopped in its tracks is nothing more than paving the way for their victory and handing the country over to them, and examples abound in Argentina, the US and elsewhere. The difference is that, in Chile, the Communist Party is leading the first option, repeating the same failed electoral recipe. Why doesn’t Jara trust in those who made their overwhelming victory possible this Sunday, throw out the corrupt people they now rely upon, and call for their candidacy to be supported by all the trade union, social and political organisations that reject the old coalition in order to confront the far-right?
On the other hand, from the Ecologist and Popular Left (coalition formed for the 2024 municipal elections by the Proletarian Action party, Equality Party, Humanist Party, among others), we are committed to an electoral and political alternative, independent of the two capitalist blocs (government and right) that have been running the country for decades, taking the risk of expressing, in our campaigns, the heartfelt demands of social uprising, and vindicating the fighting forces of that popular rebellion. The only way to defeat the far-right, the right and the false left that govern for the bosses, is to take to the streets again, with mobilisations, to strengthen and democratise the grassroots social and trade union organisations, to unify those who struggle, and to bring candidates from the base to confront the corrupt politicians who govern for those at the top.
