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One year after the start of the social outbreak, analyzes of the causes, consequences and responsibilities of the crisis have multiplied. Several of these theses have pointed to the performance of La Moneda and specifically of President Sebastián Piñera, as the rector of the University Diego Portales Carlos Peña does this Sunday for whom “one of the lessons he leaves on October 18 – that of then and now – it is government weakness ”.
In his Sunday column in The Mercury, entitled “What a fiasco!”, the lawyer is lapidary with the leadership of the Government throughout this crisis, and concludes that “the President has not been a puppet of circumstances. He is simply a bad politician, a politician who did not know how to measure up ”.
Enough ink has already been spilled describing the sociological causes of the crisis; but little attention has been paid to its political causes. And it is time, in the wake of those events, to get down to the task of critically examining the phenomenon and the role that the presidential performance played in it, ”explains the columnist to focus on the presidential responsibility in this matter.
“Social crises always need an environment of opportunity to manifest themselves. As long as that environment is not configured, crises remain larvae, they are, so to speak, crisis projects or revolts. But when politics becomes weak, confused, and unable to meet the expectations of citizens, or worse, when those in charge allow themselves to be consumed – the old narcissism – the annoyance remains without cure. behavior without guidance and quickly turns into crisis. This is what happened in Chile a year ago and what is still happening ”, he says.
In this regard, Peña recalls that “just 18 months before the events that are one year old today, President Piñera had been elected with a large majority. It was an unprecedented event in the political history of Chile. During the validity of the Constitution of 25, the right governed barely once and, on the other hand, at the beginning of the 21st century it had managed to do it twice. What could have happened so that shortly afterwards it failed so completely, in such a resounding way? ” .
According to Peña, “it would be foolish – although there will be those who are tempted to do so – to exonerate President Piñera for what happened (…) Of course, the President is not the author of the sociological causes of the crisis; but her performance provided the opportunity for her to unleash herself. “
Among these shortcomings of the presidential character, Peña pointed to what happened in the period prior to October 18, a stage that according to the analyst is characterized by a “marked narcissism, which led him to cherish the dream of international leadership (¿the return? your old competitive compulsion?); the absence of a project capable of connecting with the middle groups and its life trajectory (confusing a majority project with a clumsy slogan repeated a thousand times); the inability to elaborate a narrative that would guide the behavior of its supporters (forgetting that of I. Dinesen, that you can bear anything if you manage to tell a good story about her); the lack of understanding of long-term processes (such as the issue of La Araucanía or the fear of the majority of what nature distributes with perverse equality, such as old age or illness), and the inability to become the leader of its coalition (He defeats those who are at his side, but does not convince them) caused that in 18 months he could not govern and that in rare compensation he decided to cultivate the absence or, better, to try to fill it with an international presence. The culminating moment would be the APEC held in the Latin American oasis that suddenly, it is a matter of looking at the Plaza Baquedano, it became a wasteland ”.
After the outbreak, Peña maintains that “the President has transformed into a television character who, with the regularity of an entertainment program, distributes common places and recounts this or that measure at lunchtime to viewers, or at dusk , as if wanting to make up with the screen the absence of his will (…) that is the problem. A President can be on screen all day; But what matters is that your will counts. And unfortunately, that of the President counts every day less. And the fault is, of course, his.
And finally, in a direct message to the ranks of the ruling party, Peña maintains that “it is not worth fooling oneself. When his supporters do the debits and credits, and even as they applaud, you see them shake their heads slightly and you hear them mutter: What a fiasco!
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