'Right will win this election':  Chile to see 'relatively conservative, pro-market' reforms in near-term - video Dailymotion

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00:00They've counted the ballots, and the candidate of the united left is ahead

00:05after the first round of Chile's presidential election.

00:10However, she's only, Jeanette Jara, only ahead by three percentage points,

00:18and she faces an uphill battle, what with the far-right's José Antonio Cost

00:23finishing on 24 percent behind her 27 percent.

00:27He's also received the endorsement of more mainstream conservatives.

00:32What does this mean?

00:32Well, Chile poised in the December 14th runoff for a return of the far-right

00:37for the first days, for the first time since the days of coup leader Augusto Pinochet.

00:46Do not let fear harden your hearts.

00:49Fear is not worth it.

00:51We must fight it by giving families more security,

00:53not by inventing imaginary solutions in the minds of people who,

00:58from one second to the next, come up with an idea more radical than the last.

01:03I am sure that by working in unity with the different teams,

01:09with the people who have represented the various currents of the center-right and the right,

01:13we can recover and rebuild our homeland.

01:15And for more, let's cross to Chicago.

01:20Daniel Landsberg-Rodriguez, adjunct professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

01:27Thank you so much for being with us here on France 24.

01:31Thank you, Francois.

01:32Good to see you again.

01:33Is this first-round result in Chile, one of the most stable countries in the Americas,

01:39is this a sign that they're too, like in the UK, as we talked at the top of the hour,

01:45people are just preoccupied with illegal migrants,

01:49in Chile's case a lot of them coming from Venezuela,

01:52or is it a case of people having a short memory when it comes to their own past?

01:59Well, that's a great question.

02:04Essentially, there's few things as predictable in life,

02:08or let alone in Latin America, as Chilean elections.

02:13Every four years, they switch from left to right.

02:17It's sort of kind of, the system is sort of designed to work that way.

02:21After Pinochet fell, you had basically sort of a one-party system,

02:26but even within that party, you would be shifting from sort of a technocratic right

02:29to a more sort of rights-focused left within the party.

02:34When that system broke down, you've just had, for the last 20 years,

02:38predictable shifts from left to right, left to right, often the same people.

02:43What's happened in the last few years is that it's gotten truly polarized.

02:47The left used to run Social Democrats, whereas Jeanette Haddad is a communist.

02:52She's a member of the Communist Party, and the right used to run sort of,

02:58you know, boring business-y types.

03:00Now you have sort of firebrands, you know, anti-immigration,

03:06strong social conservative rights,

03:10to the point that you had two candidates that essentially fit that mold.

03:14There is a generational element there.

03:16The people who remember the Pinochet years are fewer.

03:21But there's also sort of a strengthening ideology.

03:24And I'd say the dominant factor,

03:27and we saw this in the sort of surprise strength of the Partido de la Gente vote,

03:33the Parisi people who, you know, really they're sort of a radical centrist block

03:38that is motivated by just strong distrust of all institutions,

03:43but sort of wants relatively moderate things when bold.

03:47Those folks, you know, there's a sense of very strong,

03:53you know, something between ennui and just wanting to burn the system down,

03:56which is, you know, further polarizing things.

03:59Because what used to be the moderate bloc has gone into sort of the disenfranchised bloc,

04:05and then you have two polar opposites.

04:07And so there's enough voters now who look at neighboring Argentina

04:11and the chainsaw economics of Javier Millet and like what they see?

04:17Well, yes.

04:18And I think that that's by design.

04:20I mean, if you see the sort of treatment that Millet is getting from the United States,

04:26Noboa in Ecuador, you know, Bukele in El Salvador,

04:30I mean, you have sort of a new sort of hemispheric system,

04:34a bit like an old Persian satrapy,

04:37in which you have essentially client states that are taken care of.

04:42And then you have sort of, you know, enemy states like Venezuela right now,

04:46or, you know, to a lesser extent, Colombia, sometimes Brazil,

04:49that get hit much harder than they would have in times past.

04:53And that creates a series of incentives to, you know,

04:57have more right-wing leaders and have the right-wing leaders act a certain way,

05:02sort of a little bit less, you know,

05:05Sebastián Piñera and a little bit Trumpier.

05:07And I think that we're sort of seeing that.

05:09And a great case in Chile specifically is Chile is a country that's running out of people.

05:14You know, Chileans don't have a lot of kids.

05:16A lot of the kids they do have leave.

05:18And at the same time, you have a very strong anti-immigrant backlash

05:23in a country that, you know, kind of needs immigrants long-term,

05:27particularly the Chilean rights,

05:28because the only parts of Chile that are having kids are really tend to vote more left.

05:33So it's interesting to see that the sort of sense of what,

05:38you know, the sort of greater MAGAM orthodoxies, you know, key policies should be,

05:43seems to be really guiding the policy prescriptions of the Chilean right.

05:48That said, you know, the right is coming back.

05:51I was going to say, and this promise by Jose Antonio Cast of mass deportation of immigrants,

05:59most of those immigrants, Venezuelans.

06:02Are Venezuelans really a problem in Chile?

06:08Look, Chile is a country that is, it doesn't get a lot of immigration historically.

06:12It's, you know, very isolated geographically.

06:14Henry Kissinger famously referred to it as a, as a dagger threatening the heart of Antarctica.

06:20You know, at the same time, so it's something that socially it does impact.

06:25At the same time, most of the Venezuelans who are in Chile hate the left about as much as

06:30caste does.

06:32So you would, and Chile historically, since it hasn't had much immigration,

06:36you can vote relatively quickly once you get there.

06:40So there's a sort of self-defeating element.

06:43At the same time, even though Chile, if you look at the actual crime statistics, it's,

06:48you know, it's not that bad, particularly for Latin America.

06:51You know, there is a very strong perception that things are worsening.

06:55And that's something that's very much motivating a lot of sort of security concerns that, you

07:01know, even without the clockwork, you know, alternation of left to right, which was the right

07:05stern now, would have probably benefited the right and is probably benefiting the far right

07:11over the sort of, you know, a rump remainder of the old institutional right, which we saw

07:18in Erline Maté, you know, greatly underperforming expectations.

07:23And Daniel, you're sitting in Chicago, where it's quite polarized these days as well, I'm

07:29told, when it comes to, you know, ICE agents and the such.

07:34Is that what just universally what works, an anti-immigrant message?

07:38Well, I'm technically in Boston right now, but I think the parallel works for either.

07:47An anti-immigrant message, yes.

07:49There is a, I'd say, a strong sense of wanting to preserve a status quo that may never have

07:57existed.

07:58And immigration tends to be a very visible, you know, threatener of that.

08:01I mean, in the last report that you were doing, you know, you were seeing it in the UK, you're

08:08seeing it in the United States, you're seeing it in, you know, across Latin America, even

08:13in Chile, which is a country that, as I mentioned, is running out of people, you know, these are

08:17very strong, motivating, you know, factors.

08:22And, you know, that's something that I think is, you know, spreading regionally in a very

08:27strong way, and that, you know, again, it allows sort of for a sense of looming threat

08:34that, you know, if you are the leader of a country where presidencies are structurally

08:39very weak, like Chile, like Argentina, you know, that they're sort of whipping boys for

08:45Congress and the courts, and, you know, you have to worry about impeachment, you have to

08:50worry about not getting anything done through your agenda.

08:53You know, that sense of manufacturing a crisis that will allow you to, you know, push through,

08:59which is something Ecuador has done quite well up until last night with the referendum.

09:04You know, that's something that I think is sort of the new playbook that a lot of these,

09:09you know, countries are following.

09:11And, you know, it's making the president stronger.

09:13Where that ends long term, unclear, but, you know, right now they're legislating more than

09:18they were before, and that's for sure.

09:19All right.

09:20So we know Augusto Pinochet in his days are, as you said at the outset, quietly being forgotten

09:26by a younger generation.

09:28How will Chileans remember the Gabriel Boric years?

09:34So it's interesting.

09:36Boric is very divisive in Chile.

09:38If you look at Boric, I mean, at least, I mean, from the perspective of, you know, me,

09:43a Venezuelan or, you know, my Colombian friends, Argentines who lived through Peronism,

09:49you know, Boric in some ways is kind of the best case scenario.

09:52If you're going to have a populist leftist, you know, he's not, you know, he's very institutionally

09:57minded.

09:58You know, he sometimes has to attack left because of, you know, folks in his coalition

10:02like Hara, who pull him left.

10:04But, you know, generally he's, you know, not that threatening.

10:08But I'd say that when you talk to Chileans, even centrist Chileans, it's seen as a threat.

10:15I'd say Chile, you know, they're very, it's a country that's very consciously aware of

10:22their own exceptionalism.

10:24You know, Chile is in a tough neighborhood and has had a pretty good run, at least economically

10:28in the last, you know, 30, 40 years.

10:30And it's something that they see is inherently fragile.

10:33So, you know, there's a sense of sort of encroaching doom that, you know, would be hard

10:39to recognize for other Latin Americans who've had to, you know, handle, you know, more, you

10:44know, hard shifts from, you know, way too left to way too right and institutional breakdown.

10:51You know, Chile's system has more or less muddled through.

10:54And that's something that, you know, creates a sense of, you know, wanting to preserve it.

10:59So I'd say that, you know, long-term Chileans, look, it's, it's, when countries don't really

11:06know what they want to do moving forward, they tend to relitigate the past, particularly

11:10in Latin America.

11:12You know, in Chile, you can sort of tell when either, you know, the left or the right is

11:15out of ideas or too weak to govern because they'll, you know, start, you know, talking

11:19about whether Naruto was poisoned or not, or whether Allende committed suicide or not.

11:25And I think that the newer generation is, is, is, is very tired of relitigating the past

11:31and wants something more forward-looking.

11:32And that's something that's playing into this.

11:34And I, you know, the last thing I'd mention is that, you know, having traveled extensively

11:38and working extensively in Latin America, Chile's Gen Z, though not very large, is probably sort

11:45of more Gen Z than anybody else's Gen Z in terms of sort of the social change, the sort

11:53of a, you know, how different they are from millennials and Gen X and the generations

11:59that came before, you know, there was very much sort of a cultural break there.

12:03And that's something that, as I mentioned, is, you know, long-term plays more for the

12:08borages of this world than for the cast, most likely, based on sort of the polling, you

12:12know, that we've seen and how that demographic votes.

12:15So it'll be interesting to see, you know, if they don't bring in immigrants who vote right

12:21and they don't have any more children, you know, there's a, you know, a sort of steady

12:27sort of drift towards a more leftist Chile in, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, which, you

12:34know, will be interesting to see and which is a pretty significant risk given the fact

12:38that, you know, they will be rewriting the Constitution at some point because it still

12:41has Pinochet's fingerprints on it.

12:43And that's something that 80% of Chileans reject.

12:46So, you know, it's, it is, you know, there is a long-term sort of a bear view from markets

12:54as a result, but a very short-term bull view because the right will win this election.

13:00They won't be able to legislate easily, but, you know, they can probably, you know, have

13:05an easier time of it than the last few governments have, given, you know, what we can see of the

13:09legislative math.

13:10So we're going to see a lot of reforms and they're probably all going to be, you know, relatively

13:14conservative and pro-market in the near term.

13:16Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, always a pleasure.

13:18Many thanks for joining us here on France 24.

13:21Thank you, Francois.

13:22Have a great day.

'Right will win this election': Chile to see 'relatively conservative, pro-market' reforms in near-term

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