Almost without water in the pool, parties seek to deliver limited reform to the political system

One of the transversal diagnoses regarding national politics is that the hyperfragmentation that exists in Congress makes it difficult to advance the agenda of the Government in power.. In both past constitutional processes, the reform of the political system was a key issue and, in different ways, they sought to confront this problem. During the last few weeks the debate has been reopened, since the legislative agenda projects a space for this discussion to materialize in Congress. However, talks between the parties are underway and there are doubts regarding the progress of the reform.

After the second constitutional proposal was rejected on December 17, second-line political actors and also from different sectors, began to engage in conversations regarding what could be rescued from both constituent processes rejected by citizens. There, a consensus was reached that the reforms to the political system could be rescued and, in particular, what the Expert Commission had proposed.

In that sense, they intended to rescue axes of the proposal to promote governability, such as – for example – the one that determined that political parties that reach at least 5 percent of the votes validly cast at the national level in the election of members of the Chamber of Deputies and Deputies would have the right to seats in the National Congress. The other rule that has also been commented on is the one that established that, when a parliamentarian resigned from his party, he had to leave his position in Congress, since the seat belongs to the political community.

The Horizontal study center, and people who carried out the “Against” campaign, who have been in these conversations, technically agree on the aforementioned diagnoses, but also that the reform should have a principle of legislative management and citizen emergencies. . However, as revealed Thirdthe people who have been managing the proposals and conversations are former commissioners Juan José Ossa (RN), Sebastián Soto, Antonia Rivas (CS) and Gabriel Osorio (PS).

Now, there is no document with a specific proposal, since voices familiar with the process maintain that the Expert Commission’s project was designed for a new Constitution, not for the current Congress, with the incumbents, to carry out the reform.

Other voices, from different sectors but also involved in the preliminary conversations, hope that the bulk of the experts’ proposal will be taken, since the idea is that it be a comprehensive reform. They assure that taking only the 5% measures and the one that combats crowding in matches would be insufficient.

Now, those who participated in the preliminary conversations warn that the process to carry out the constitutional reform is in the presidencies of the political parties, in the Segpres and, above all, in Congress.

High-ranking opposition sources hope that the constitutional reform will be carried out, however, they do not believe that the necessary majorities will be obtained. But the diagnosis of the president of Evópoli, Gloria Hutt, is different.

Hutt assured that from Chile Vamos “e“We are all very willing to go forward with the proposal” and, given the previous history of transversal work by the center-right, including representatives of the Broad Front, plus the rescue of the Expert Commission’s proposal, “we should not have problems over the votes ”. Where the former constitutional advisor does see some difficulty may be that what is now proposed is a little more limited than the total content of what the experts proposed.

In any case, the helmsman of Evópoli believes that the 5% threshold is essential to install and also regarding discolage. “TWe have to prioritize all aspects which are the most, we could call, harmful to governability. Everything that implies a difficulty in reaching agreements and clearly the threshold is, because it requires dealing with more than 20 people.”

Hutt believes that there will be small parties that will oppose, because ““They are not going to want to merge.” His party, he says, has always supported the idea of ​​the threshold, even though his store got 4.8% in the last vote. Despite that, he believes that ““It is worth making the effort to complete the 5% and there is a transition from a first electoral period that is with 4%.”

Likewise, he believes that in the conversations between experts both the ruling party and the opposition have been represented. For the president of Evópoli “The conversation that is missing is, for example, with Minister Elizalde p“to square the proposal and agree on the terms to approve it soon.”

The idea is to present a ““A project that is simple, that is very forceful in the issues it addresses, but that can be dispatched quickly, precisely because it is inconvenient for it to be mixed with the discussion of the elections,” says former Minister Hutt. Ideally, she says, between now and July, prior to the registration of candidates for the elections.

Minister Álvaro Elizalde referred to the issue at the La Moneda Palace and insisted that “the Government’s priorities are social in nature. This does not prevent us from believing that everything that contributes to improving our political system, generating disincentives to atomization, is something that should be welcomed and encouraged.”

The minister revealed that “there is a dialogue that is developing,” but assured that the Government “is focused on social reforms.” This, although he recognized that there is the challenge of “generating conditions so that the political system provides a timely response to the demands of citizens and that contributes to giving greater legitimacy and strength to our democracy and, therefore, the incentives must be contrary to atomization, division and, rather, be oriented towards generating agreements that allow unlocking a series of initiatives that translate into concrete improvements in the quality of life of Chileans.”

When asked about the text of the Expert Commission, he maintained that “it is one of the background information that will obviously have to be kept in view.”

When asking the Constitution Commission of the House, the diagnosis is not very different between the ruling party and the opposition. The president of said body, Raúl Leiva (PS), would support the reform, but he does not see that there is much room in Congress: “In the current environment I do not think it will generate consensus, given the climate of polarization and atomization. But, for the same reason, it is extremely necessary to generate governability and stability in the system.”

His socialist counterpart, Leonardo Soto, agrees with the diagnosis that “it is almost impossible to govern.” Soto explains it by “discolegation or transfuguismo, that bad practice in which several parliamentarians are elected by a political party that supports a Government and change their affiliation and join other political parties during their mandate and join the opposition or blocking the Government’s action, without consulting its voters. This democratic vice, together with the excessive proliferation of political parties – there are nearly 20 current formations – is destroying this Government and will do the same with those that come and, therefore, a political reform is urgently needed to eradicate them.” Alluding to what happened with the Democrats party parliamentarians who crossed the pond to the right.

Soto even assures that “the PS is willing to face this serious problem of governability and is preparing a constitutional reform that eliminates the serious effects of the combination of transfuguismo and the excessive fragmentation of parties in our political system. For the good of Chile,” he emphasizes.

Representative Camila Flores (RN) understands that the reform of the political system is also a citizen concern and coincides with the previous diagnoses. For her, there are many parliamentarians and she assures that ““I have always been available to make reforms to the political system that are precisely in line with deepening democracy.”

However, Flores is sincere that “I honestly don’t know if there will be the mood for that. We, the right, whenever we have tried to promote reforms to the political system, the left abandons itself.” In fact, he says, unlike the PS parliamentarians, “I think they would rather oppose it once again.”

The diagnosis on the left, as Hutt pointed out, is that the smaller parties will oppose it, given that they would put their influence in Parliament at risk. The president of Amarillos por Chile, Andrés Jouannet, for example, is the only parliamentarian of his group in Congress and is an opponent of this measure.

In conversation with The counterthe Yellows deputy predicted that he does not believe that the reform will emerge in Congress, since the main priority should be on the security agenda.

Now, Jouannet believes that what is proposed is not a reform of the political system, “it is a reform to the electoral system and the party system” and “no one can carry out an electoral reform a year and a half before a parliamentary election. “That’s not very serious.” Furthermore, he adds that a reform of these characteristics should be included in the Government program and accused that “The reforms are made in Parliament, they are not made in the institutes, notor intellectuals do it.”

For the deputy for La Araucanía, the proposal lacks support, since it is taken from a rejected constituent process and, in addition, he accuses that ““the intellectual pseudo-frond here, from the left and the right, that exists here in Santiago, which has no connection to the reality of the regions and the reality of the electoral system,” addresses the debate poorly.