Approximate reading time: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
Barely a month into Gabriel Boric’s mandate I wrote a column – Balance of the first month of government: closer to Dragon Ball Z than to Realpolitk – and I characterized that generation as that of immediatism, based on images without background scenery, without connection between before and after. And that does not understand politics as a process, but rather as culturally dominated by the series discussed. I stated that she influenced their childhoods so much that the president himself admitted feeling like a follower of her: “I have serious doubts between Gohan growing up and Piccolo when he stops being an enemy… PS: I confess that for some time I had a crush on Bulma,” he declared in his twitter account. The current administration showed the traits that would accompany it.
In the first month, the government already showed a lack of political spirit and experience in key positions, where arrogance abounded: an administration with a lot of activism, but little long-term strategy. The generation that came to power with Gabriel Boric is that of the strong and fast scenes of many borrowed lives, of immediacy, of the fragile moment, of activism, of Tiktok, of Instagram, for which even Facebook is already a remnant of the past .
In the mid-term balance, it is a government that, among other things, lost the 2022 constitutional plebiscite, which added its errors to those of the constituents themselves in the midst of the foreseeable million-dollar campaign against them orchestrated by the business world, as Nicolás Ibáñez himself would recognize in October 2021 in Emol. A government that tries to resolve the embezzlement committed by ISAPRES – by not applying the mandate of the law regarding the calculation of risk factors – at the expense of contributors and that fails to make progress in ending this other legalized theft that is the profits of the AFPs. It has given in on its original project, legitimizing the AFPs, without managing to remove them from the pension system or obtain a meager contribution of additional contributions from employers for a hypothetical solidarity cohesion fund, especially with retired women. And a system of public transfers to friendly foundations for activist projects was set up, generating great anger in the country, along with meetings at lobbyist Zalaquett’s home of members of a generation that shouted from the rooftops that it had “ a higher ethical standard” than that of previous leaders. Of course, there is the right’s tenacious rejection of the proposed legislation and the massive campaign to put crime in the spotlight every day, blaming immigration and the government. But he gave up carrying out the essential reform of the police and allowed himself to be carried away by the authoritarian and punishing discourse, as if it had any capacity for action against crime and its new modalities linked to organized crime.
In real life Boric is not Goku, and no one has seven lives, much less borrowed ones like in the famous series. A lack of a longer-term government strategy is evident in the Boric administration, and it seems that there will no longer be one. Some in it believe that it is not necessary either, except to float until the cycle ends. But each announcement generates controversy among the pro-government forces, in the midst of an economy that is not taking off after an open slowdown. Neoliberal orthodoxy still has license to continue making mistakes, while the banks, which accumulate million-dollar profits along with the ISAPRE, the AFP, the concessionaires and large-scale retailers, rub their hands.
The Dragon Ball Z generation, which President Boric represents so well, added to the immobility of Mario Marcel, in charge of the fiscal purse, and activism without strategy, mixed inexperience, sometimes absence of talent and above all arrogance, which have damaged the capital accumulated over years of social and political struggles to transform a very unequal country. It is to be hoped that the process does not end up opening the possibility of someone from the extreme right winning the presidency. After all, we have a long authoritarian and oligarchic experience that is difficult to shake off and that the generation led by President Boric Barros, as Daniel Matamala characterized him, makes the dream of the transformations of the agendas of October 18 and The May 2021 elections will conclude in 2026 with the right returning in glory and majesty to La Moneda.
By Edison Ortiz