The excessive centralism of the state, the democratic restrictions, the lack of vision for the country as long-term objectives, the incoherence of ideological visions, the authoritarian leadership and the democratic shortcomings presented by the parties, create and foster the objective conditions for corruption. and conflicts of interest. They slow down communal and regional political-economic development, while the lack of a credible alternative maintains and accentuates the alienation of citizens in political and organizational processes. Given the current situation, the necessary and urgent reorganization of citizens can only occur from the base, within specific local parameters intertwined with a process of political-administrative decentralization.
“Administrative centralization only serves to enervate the peoples subject to it, since it incessantly tends to diminish their spirit of citizenship…. It can therefore contribute admirably to the ephemeral greatness of a man, but not to the lasting prosperity of a people” Alexis de Torqueville (1835).
The reform of the state through a decentralization process that implies greater local decision-making power with respect to the state is an eternal project in our country. Since before independence, but especially since 1925, many have tried to carry out decentralizing processes in their political aspect, even through insurrections such as the so-called “constituent revolution.” However, despite defeats suffered in this field, decentralizing processes have not been forgotten because throughout history they are revived again and again, each time administrative deficiencies, monopolistic concentration, corruption, absolutism and the postponement of citizen needs. Throughout history, many have promised and abandoned decentralizing projects. Abandoned because at the center of a decentralization process is democracy and equity. Centralization is the cornerstone on which bourgeois power is based within a state, because it not only centralizes political power but also economic power.
The last failed attempt at decentralization was the one proposed by former President Bachelet with her proposal for citizen government exposed in her presidential campaign activities and framed in her program when she tells us “The challenge today is that the regions and communes and their people have the capabilities and tools to manage your destiny. That is the challenge that I will take on in the next concertation government.”
Chile has not always been a centralized entity, in reality no country in the world was at the beginning of centralized entities, the countries were born through the unification of politically autonomous communes (towns), who were centralized to the extent that their rights were curtailed. and powers and economic and political elites developed that absorbed all the powers, creating the unequal country in political and economic rights that we know today.
If Chile wants to become a democratic country framed in a politically and economically egalitarian society truly led by the majority, then citizens must begin by reclaiming their communes for themselves through the fight for the political and administrative decentralization of the state.
The task is truly gigantic if you take into account that the political struggle for control of the centralized state has always been carried out by centralized national parties, which have acquired that power for themselves, become accustomed to it and develop authoritarian habits. The people have not had experience nor have they had local political organizations that fight politically for control of the communal governments for themselves.
“Decentralization means handing over, to a large extent, the power of public decisions to Subnational Governments (Regional and Local), which due to their sociopolitical and territorial condition are closer to citizens and their problems. That is, in simple terms, decentralization means handing over effective political power to regional or local communities, to carry out what they democratically determine.”
“Decentralization is not just talking about a policy and an organic administrative apparatus of any State. It is talking about a concept of society that is based on the reconstruction of politically organized communities, where the commune is recreated as an instrument for the sovereign political decision of regional and local communities. (Pablo Monjes Reyes. Decentralization in Chile and the limits of the neoliberal model. G-80 2008-09-26)
The Chilean state is a hyper-centralized entity, but in addition the political parties that emerge and develop within Chilean society are born with a vision and centralizing organic structures that resemble the state. The state as a centralized and centralizing entity that controls and dominates all administrative political activity through and through all the public departments of the country, manifests such a network of bureaucratic positions that can only be measured in thousands. Such a state has immense power where parties or coalitions of parties, in the absence of clear policies and ideology or other objectives other than power, fight for control of the state and put this immense power at their disposal using it as a form of control. on the bases of the parties themselves, the bureaucrats and their functions.
The immense number of bureaucratic positions controlled by the government in power are distributed among the different parties that make up the coalition. In turn, the parties distribute positions among their internal factions according to their levels of influence. This creates friction and disagreements within the parties, sometimes openly, for an extra quota of seats, therefore, power. Governments formed on the basis of a coalition of heterogeneous forces, not only in origins but also in objectives, by only fighting to obtain the highest share of power, create a situation of mutual cancellation when implementing policies or administrative measures, allowing In most cases, the paralysis in the formulation of political objectives or bills or, in the best of cases, its delay seeking the highest electoral political return.
All the party struggles that we have witnessed in the last thirty years, inside and outside the ruling coalition, are clearly framed in the fight for control of the bureaucratic apparatus or in intentions to access more shares of power within the different powers. of the state and representative institutions.
The fight for control of the bureaucratic apparatus of the state framed and aggravated by the organizational vacuum on the part of the people, corruption and conflict of interest arise. Conflict of interest manifested through practices giving irrational favors to the business community, such as theft from the state coffers in favor of partisan groups or for personal benefit and to the detriment of society as a whole, because placed before the national interests and their own interests of group or individual always opt for the latter. Looked at this way, in whose favor will government officials respond, the legislators in the senate, in the chamber of deputies or in the mayor’s offices, placed in the dilemma of approving democratizing measures that help society and its participation in creating a country? for everyone, but does it undermine the power of the government, its authority and political vision of the parties, and themselves? Will they support the society they claim to represent or the parties that decided their positions and to which their political and economic interests are linked? Especially when the people are disorganized therefore without the capacity to respond and control over their chosen ones?
How could they represent or ensure the interests of society as a whole, if neither they themselves, as a party, or as a government, have clearly defined what those majority interests are? How could they represent the political and economic interests of the majority if they themselves are linked or have been integrated into the political and economic interests of the minority in the country?
Obviously, as we have witnessed countless times, they always respond to their party or the government, which is sometimes the same thing, abandoning society to its fate with palliative measures or explanations without any direction or objective other than to calm the majority of the population. country as has happened in cases of unfulfilled programs and corruption processes with non-existent trials or slaps on the hands. Isn’t it abandoning citizens to their fate as in the case of corporate abuses and collusion, which are by no means isolated cases but rather constant practices?
The centralization of the state due to the power it concentrates in the absence of strong citizen organization, forms fertile ground for political blackmail of conditional support in exchange for extra favors that can be extracted. Blackmail to which not only the state and the ministries can be subject when presenting bills, it also occurs between the parties of the same coalition. The transition from blackmail and clientelism to rampant political and economic corruption is defined by a very fine line that today is crossed too naturally and frequently at all levels of government and parties.
The lack of democracy within all parties, like the lack of country objectives, evidently creates a state of permanent conflict of interest when the question arises. Who do parties serve, society or themselves? Obviously to themselves. Just as it happens today with the negotiation for quotas for mayors, where mayoralties are given or taken away as if it were a negotiation between farm owners, behind the backs of the people in those districts. What is democratic about all this?
The minuscule influence of the parties in Chilean society is directly proportional to their political work within society, their organizational concepts, their ambiguous policies and ways of relating to citizens. Citizenship that does suffer a double exclusion. An objective economic exclusion as it is one of the countries with the greatest inequality in the distribution of its wealth and a subjective political exclusion as it does not find a party or organization at the national level that it can trust.
In the midst of this situation of lack of organizational ideas, blackmail, clientelism and corruption, the parties only manage to reinforce their party apparatuses with forms of authoritarian and repetitive leadership, which distances and closes participation to militancy that honestly seeks changes in society. and possible new militants, leaving the parties and their need to grow and maintain influence, in a position of work agencies, where the only motivating requirements to enter are: having a pituto (important, but not necessary), obedience and keeping your mouth shut. clientelism.
These situations described above only have a place and can exist in an organizational vacuum in society as it occurs in our country. Since there is no massive and organized pressure from society that forces the parties and the government, but rather to change the course of their own accommodation, to work on developing measured platforms and realistic bills of law for the benefit of society, which by The latter forces them to decorum, allows them to continue operating in the clouds yawning the dream of feeling progressive. This organizational vacuum is due in part to the fact that no party present on the national stage, even in the extra-parliamentary, has been able to develop a policy and an organizational relationship with the living forces of today’s modern society that encourages it to mobilize and the lack of imagination or balance, of the organizational failures of the parties, on the part of natural social leaders in order to find organizational methods and concepts for citizen organization from another angle than the traditional top-down one.
All the shortcomings that the country suffers in terms of democracy, social and economic inequalities are the same as more than thirty years ago when profound changes were demanded. He handed over his mandate to a coalition and in 30 years it has been unable to carry out economic reforms and change the constitution from a dictatorial to a democratic one.
In reality, promises of real and effective representation are no longer enough or have a great effect on the majority of the Chilean population if they are not accompanied by a real role to play for them. Obviously it does not help short-termism that society sees all parties as corrupt, seeking political positions only for themselves. The irruption of caudillos, rebels and other types of herbs, which emerge from time to time, only brings greater confusion as with the creative oxymoron of Marcos Henríquez Ominami, several years ago, in the TVN program El Factor Guillier, where He tells us that “he is a socialist, but he likes the market.” Nice way to declare yourself neoliberal.
Given this situation, is it possible with these same parties and organizations to advance democratizing and decentralizing policies of the political power of the state with measures and laws that make the participation of the population possible and accessible, bring about their dreams and reverse the distance from democratic political exercises? Will the parties in power and those who aspire to it be willing to expand and share that power? Until today, the answer has always been no.
All attempts to expand democracy and decentralize the political power of the state have been blocked by the political parties themselves, who oppose handing over democratic power to citizens for fear of diminishing their own and being surpassed. While this scared the Concertación in the past, today it scares the FA.
The citizen government that Michelle Bachelet offered us was precisely about carrying out a decentralization process. Although the citizen government was a process of bureaucratic decentralization, it at least showed the need to bring about changes that would allow the government to get closer to the citizens without the need for political changes. In effect, the decentralizing changes of the state have occurred in their bureaucratic but not political administrative form, such as the creation of Regional Governments (GORE), where the regional councilors were appointed by indirect election by the communal councilors, only now after many years of tug of war they will be directly elected, but the president of the Regional Council will continue to be the Mayor, who only performs an administrative task but not government as his acronym implies. Mayor who in turn has been appointed by the president of the nation as his trusted person.
This decentralizing attempt, which could be called progress, has in reality only created more bureaucratic positions to fight for since there is no political decentralization that really allows the people to get closer to the different levels of government, national, regional and communal. Because it is not the same for the government and the parties to approach citizens in a paternalistic manner as for citizens to approach the government and power in an organized manner. Approach that is only possible through the political organization of the population, not only through regional parties, but also communal ones, which allows the population to create their own organizations, to direct their commune for themselves, based on their own development interests. and their region, to march from those parameters in a national federative political organization or whatever they decide democratically. For this, a political decentralization of the state is needed, a new law on political parties or, better yet, changing the constitution.
Only a decentralizing political-administrative process could definitively change the national political dynamics, it would allow the country to end the organizational vacuum on the part of the citizens, it would allow entering into a boiling of participatory ideas and change, in turn fostering necessary political pressure on the government to national parties to reformulate themselves not only politically but also structurally, because neither their policies nor their structures account for the changes in Chile and the world.
The most important fight to focus on at the current moment is the fight for democratic expansion, through the fight for the political and administrative decentralization of the state, so that, through the spaces gained in this fight, it further encourages citizen organization. , starting from local communal and regional spaces, as a way to reach the national level with a truly organized and representative people from the smallest to the largest spaces. This means a new approach, a new organizational way and enormous work and sacrifice, which has nothing glamorous or media-driven, it is unknown, against the current, devalued, ignored, but it is concrete, real, based on interest and immediate local needs. concrete, but thinking about the future. It is a work of total contrast in terms of ideas, objectives and organizational concepts and the type of organization to be created, with that carried out by the majority of the Concertación parties and by the FA now.
The most important thing today, to create the foundations for important changes, is the citizen political reorganization on a local and territorial basis.
