At the foot of the Santiago de Chile Mountains, in the Chiños Center of the University of Los Andes, where he is also a professor, is the office of Daniel Mansuy (47, Valparaiso, 47), head of the aforementioned research and research department. Next to a large window overlooking greenery and mountains, there is a library and a desk, with photographs of the sailor’s father and his seven children, and four volumes of important editions on display. american democracy (1835-1840), the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville on the challenges and opportunities of a democratic society based on the case of the United States.
That’s no coincidence. This Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Rennes (France) praises the authors of the following books: old regime and revolutionand has been studying Aristotle’s intellectual influence on him for some time. That’s all, he admitted, and the distance from the center of the capital and other “potato-burning places” gives him calm and time to reflect. Of course, with the exigencies of politics at stake, he values proximity to those locations.
He is also an associate researcher at the Institute of Social Studies (IES), a panelist and columnist for T13 Radio and CNN Chile. mercuryfull member of the Chilean Academy of Social, Political and Moral Sciences and host of the Book Podcast replicaMansuy is a unique and needed voice in the intellectual space of the Chilean right.
As for the rest, the left thinks the right, so much so that it published the following on the 50th anniversary of the 1973 military coup: Salvador Allende, Chilean Left and Popular Unitya book publicly recommended by President Gabriel Boric. However, the Frente Amplista leader has not made a statement on this matter. people innocent of authority ” (Taurus, 2025) is a grim, sometimes unforgiving chronicle of a generation that has “never had a political project in the strict sense of the word”, going from street protests to Moneda Palace in a decade.
As presidential and parliamentary elections approach, Mansui integrates that perspective into a complex political picture. And it begins with the scenario that is drawn if, as the polls suggest, the official candidate Janet Jara loses in the second round to one of the right-wing representatives: José Antonio Casto (Republican), Evelyn Mattei (UDI – Chile Vamos) or Johannes Kaiser (National Liberal Party).
If the left opposes, analysts think, “the government will have to think about what the left had to do in government, how many expectations it has let down, its great legacy, between Kast and Kaiser, adding 40 points, at least 35 points.” And Frente Amplio will have some responsibility for this phenomenon, and that cannot be ignored. So when the left criticizes Kaiser so thoroughly for reasons that are understandable, I wish someone would reflect and say, “Well, we made this possible.” They must take responsibility for the political mistakes they made to make that happen. ”
This is why Mansui declared Kaiser to be Boric’s son, and why he believes the ultra-liberal candidate’s cronies should be mindful that “very strong identity discourse boomerangs when it comes to governance.” For this reason, “discourses of identity seem to be of little use if power is a vocation. The right, whose vocation is power, should therefore distance itself from the discourse of identity that cost the Broad Front so much and so upset the emperor himself.”
Having said the above, and beyond what is at stake in this Sunday’s election (which is by no means small), the academic believes 2025 will be “one of the flattest electoral campaigns in our recent history.” In that context, “Janet Jara came out feeling a bit defeated, Evelyn Massey was very erratic and unable to offer a programmatic platform that would convey anything, and Casto has run a very conservative campaign since taking office. pole position To win the second round. ”
Therefore, Jara, Kast and Massey, who occupy the first three places in the polls, are “unoriginal candidates, not very innovative, not very risky, with little room to debate their proposals. And as a result, whoever wins will have a hard time because campaigns serve to build political capital, to gain political experience, and they have failed to do so.”
And on the right, the academic added, “we don’t know much about what the candidates want to do to stimulate the economy or how they want to control security beyond ‘hardline’ slogans.” “In this environment, rather, Fome (Boring) Kaiser is a candidate who has managed to communicate something.”And that’s not all about this politician, who showed growth in the last known poll before the polling ban went into effect.
“Kaiser is telling the public that after October 18, it was in danger of disappearing,” Mansui believes. For the National Liberals, they think that “it may sound stupid, but it is not good to go to the second round” (…)
Moreover, the author is one of those who doesn’t believe in the truism that a second presidential vote is a new election where everything starts from scratch, but he goes out of his way to say, “If Kaiser were to advance to the second round, it would really be a different election, because that’s a scenario where no one is running.”
a tired country
“Perhaps this country is tired after going through a highly political intensity and countless election cycles from 2019 to 2023. Or maybe a hyper-politicized cycle is followed by a rather de-politicized cycle. Because people “This cycle may have been exhausting for the population,” Mansui says of what has been happening in Chile since the outbreak of the pandemic in 2019, and of the rejection in Chile, which will reach a critical moment in September 2022. Proposal for a new constitution. And while he shares in part what Ascanio Cavallo wrote at the time of the uprising: “When the far left wins, the far right always wins,” he also thinks that “after the revolution, which in this case was not a revolution, but which it wished it had been. There will always be a hangover of order. So if the left doesn’t know how to guide and manage that poignant moment, what will come is a restoration of order, and it may come sooner or later, but it is something akin to a law.” ”
For scholars, the potential end of this cycle is not synonymous with a return to the most predictable and consensual era of democratic transitions. “Some of the elites were dreaming of a second-round Matej-(Carolina) Toja match until January. It’s like a return to the 90s, where a lot of people watched that movie, ‘Chile is back to normal,’ but it’s completely losing sight of the fact that Chile is not in that category, so the discourse of unity and the agreement is a very poor speech.”
Beyond the mistakes of Mr. Mattei, who “never found a clear message,” and Mr. Kast, who chose a cautious stance and left radicalism to the Kaiser, Mansui recognizes that this is a historical moment that can also be a trap: “In the May 2021 elections, the right has virtually disappeared, so there is a very strong sense of revenge in certain sectors, which can become pathological if managed poorly. The right now has the same challenges that the left had.” It was four years ago, but I still feel that way. ”
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